You hacks wouldn't know
real poetry if it ****** you.

-Parsley flakes
-Cheap pens
-Memo notebook
-Breaded fish filets
-1% milk
-Bleach for the bathroom floor
-Brillo pads
-Italian Wedding soup
-Instant meals
-Pushpins
-2 cans of fruit cocktail

      Man, I grew up on fruit cocktail.
      Waxy cherries, see-through grapes, grain pineapples,
      and wrinkled peaches bathing in thick syrup,
      waiting to see 1990s kitchen lights.

      But it probably costs $2, or more, now.
     And I've got a car I need to keep runnin',
      a house I gotta keep standin',
      a job I have to keep goin' to /
      keep bustin' my *** for.
      I guess I can see how things go
      in the next few years.
      Maybe it'll be in paste form then.

We had coffee last Wednesday.
She took hers black,
like her blouse, its buttons,
right-wrist bangles,
but not her earrings.
They were basil, wrapped
in a blue pool liner,
and glazed with July-sky.

The painstakingly swept seven-
o'clock tile floor was a February
beach by one: beige coast cloaked
by footstep salt dance mats,
and slush like snow cones
tossed on the boardwalk.

You've got a flat screen mounted
on your kitchen wall with zip
ties and chewing gum.
There's an ashtray by your left
wrist, and a tattoo on your right
of a midnight street light sunshine
shine
down
on a reupholstered love seat,
only used twice: once for the Eisenhowers,
once for last weekend watching Seinfeld
reruns, putting out Sonomas and *** talk
on the twill-like cushions in that dank
basement apartment w/ poster'd brick
walls.
Slayer, Sinatra, Sabbath, Springsteen,
a Space Cowboy, and something Sanskrit
above your box-springless mattress
about the cosmos spitting hellfire
next month because we didn't sacrifice
crumpled dollars yesterday, or Clinton
in the '90s. There are masses of humans paying
for the market collapse that sent 800,000
oranges rolling into the street, cold.
God-fearing couples are abstaining from ***
to save their souls from the ******
Rapture. Cable cords are being unplugged
in the middle of A Christmas Story so people
can hang themselves from church steeples
to avoid ruining their Chuck Taylor Loafer
Tennis Shoes in the molten **** suffocating
saplings and parking meters. Christ'll save
the righteous ones, the ones strung up closest
to the bell tower.

The parish hall radio says salvation's
only as good as a new haircut.
And that we should all pick up the warped
acoustic guitar in the cellar, and try
to form barre chords with our swollen
knuckles and arthritic wrists now
because punk music will be dead tomorrow.
Hell, the postman will be dead tomorrow,
and every little postcard, paycheck, and print
coupon he's carrying will be dead, too.

There is an ashtray by your left wrist,
and a tattoo on your right.

I read through a bedside stack
of my poems labeled The Heartfelt Architect.
They were bound with a paperclip
reshaped to accommodate their numbers.
Half the pages featured watermarks
around the edges like emotional copyrights.
I had written about friends' frustrations
with loves and losses for three years,
stressing that paperclip every day
before realizing I had written an autobiography.

Saturday alone on a love seat
for two with my roommate
plucking away at twisted nickel
across the room.

Unshowered, unmotivated,
a maybe Monday.

My clean laundry's a footrest
for ***** feet fresh off the
almost autumn asphalt.
Come visit us.

Be unshowered and unmotivated
on this maybe Monday.

Don't worry, the door's unlocked.
There's just a few hundred
flamingos waiting to get in,
but they should move

at the sound of your unshowered,
unmotivated, maybe Monday footsteps

I'm not leaving behind loose change
to later find a hundred dollar bill
beneath my skin.

Cool Daddy-os dig free
between a highway from then
breathing out youth,

breathing in universe,
holding their poetry guts,
letting them swell.

Swell big balloon pin *****
pop splatter ink notebook.
Words, words, planned lines.*

The cursive coffee house
where people yak metaphors
is congress. Mad.

And I'm a saucer cat
deciding to run, or burn,
when the cup tips.

And I'm the last few lights
radiating false security
on highway cars.

And I'm the road, hoarding
rubber tires and soda cans
for newish guard rails.

And I am oak trees mourning
fallen brothers, lovers 'cause
we all fall the same.

It all goes the same way.  
It all swells, pops, talks, burns, and
falls the same way.

I-81 North towards Hazleton.
                   Exit to Hazleton.
Merge left away from Mahanoy
City exit.
           Luzerne County crossing.
                             I always thought the spheres on telephone wires were kids' basketballs that got stuck in the sky.
    Three New York plates in half a mile.
                              151 A or B?  
Kelly Clarkson tells me through static that I don't know a thing about her.
    Water beads on plastic cup lids by the "diet" indent, but never goes in.
          Americans are water.
                      Lemonade clots the cuts
                      on my lips.
The car's a few years old but still carries its dealership scent.
                   Adjacent drivers keep their
                   lazy eyes on their phones.
Prismatic flashes through tinted windows from a woman changing CDs.
           Oaks in the distance overtake
           stores and church steeples.
                *The earth is theirs.

Do you like art?
Does Renoir sit in a frame above your bed?
Are you alone?
What does this painting look like to you?
I use dots to portray events in my life as described by others.
Van Gogh never cut his ear off.
Georgia O’Keeffe loved painting vaginas, and so do I.
Want to be a model in my next work?
I met Bosch at Starbucks a few years back.
This took me twenty-two hours to paint.
Buy this, buy that.
Andy Warhol is my dad.

I walked into the laundry room
to a couple folding into each other.
Her chartreuse camisole and his
evergreen boxers pined for a bough
break in the noise of twenty-something
cents rattling in the dryers.  
They talked about peeling off
and sorting each other's skin layers
by darks and lights, trying to find
a neutral blush they could blend on.  

My towels had three minutes
left on the spin cycle, so I walked past them into the dim-lit room, took
a seat on a dryer, and turned around
to face the cream brick wall and
pipes cutting on a diagonal, dividing
it into lights and darks.

Sometimes on the way out of Giant,
I’ll spend time freeing change
from the receipt paper
bindle in my coat pocket
for one two-twist mystery prize
from a Folz machine.

Two quarters:
just enough for a plastic, sapphire ring and a cheap
laugh while I juggle coffee cream cartons in both arms.

I strap them in the passenger seat,
sharing it as my sister
and I had just to sit up straight
and marvel at the maple branches
washing the windshield in green,
leaving helicopters and dew trails.

We watched slug trails glisten
like Berger Lake water
beneath the incandescent streetlight.
Bright like the last cigarette my grandma snuffed out
in a smokeless ash tray.
Bright like the first halogen headlights that stung my retinas.
Bright like the quarter my grandpa gave me for the Folz machine
in the Sylvania.
And bright like the plastic, emerald ring I showed him.

No, not for Fifth Avenue or the suits
giving the homeless more **** than change.
This one's for Buffalo, the city above
and below the city.

Where we watched fireworks pop low
behind a Chinese restaurant's mustard frame
on the hood of my car contemplating
Wolfgang. Where, 20.3 miles away,
I saw two men holding hands, and I felt
whole. Where we could find a sit-down
dinner / no candles, but not everywhere
can be paradise / at 9:30. Where we tried
to make love in a bed too big for two
small people in this big, big world.
We're stray cats playing with locked
keys left in the ignition and a wire
hanger snake slithering through
the window seal. High moon,
we held hands, receipts, and ice cream
cones at Anderson's Crocs-behind-
the-counter-custard-and-roast-beef-
stand. We kept a gallon of lemon tea
in an ice pail as our centerpiece / king
suite. The Holiday Inn pool tasted
like ****, and boiled my contacts
like a fried egg.

But that's all gone now.
The fireworks, the dinner,
the sexless bed, the eggs.
All buried in Buffalo.

I don’t need to act profound
to feel like a poet. I don’t have
to unnecessarily waltz around
the truth because I can’t always
fill a stanza. I don’t have to rhyme
to get my point across.
I don’t have to curse life
or write my sorrows. I don’t
have to manipulate the emotions
of others. I don’t have to manipulate
my own. I don’t have to write for anyone.
I don’t have to appease anyone because that’s
not poetry. It’s not about tailoring your mind
to meet the expectations of others. It’s not about
always speaking eloquently. ****
anyone who tries to establish rules for poetry.
Poetry has no guidelines, only the ones
we establish ourselves.

Pacing on cold, honeycomb linoleum,
I watched the sun rise through mesh
curtains. Sunlight striped my chest
like Gothic architecture while a clock
measured the outside. Two strikes
for a car to pass, seven for a lonesome
jogger, twelve for leaves to reach
the road, twenty for a cloud to overtake the window pane, and three
months left for me to watch it.

—Ray Barbee, 1971 -

Barbee's stuff just hits, sounds
straight like a bee-line back
through bedrooms, garages, picks.

Back to when it was man
manipulating ma-
chine, and not the other

way 'round. Just human hands,
white nails, and some strings,
plucking.

And just one here-and-there
hi-hat and one woodblock.
The simple sound of it,

just pins for the groove
to move on.

I knelt next to the bed and rested my elbows
on her pale thighs. Before I prayed, I pulled
a rosary from between my ******* and wrapped Jesus'
crown of thorns around my knuckles. My babygirl's
chewed nails massaged my parted lips, and the Sharpie
on her hand overpowered her lilac perfume.
I dropped to the blankets when she spread her legs
and the scent of impatient desire filled me. I eased two
fingers into her and begged Jesus for forgiveness.

It had been awhile since I made
my bed blanket print down.
The lines diced her torso like
veal bound with baler's twine.
I walked out shirtless, aimless
into the old night beneath
the frigid-stricken branches
refusing to sway. The pads
of my feet turned gravel
from the fresh asphalt the city
just laid beside me. The tar
lines that patched the gaps
glossy like kintsukuroi.
Where workers in ash and oil
gloves picked away at the new
earth two weeks beside me.
Too weak beside me,
too weak alone.
My movements were sparse
wading through the dry
swimming pool. My joints
were like a shed lock trying
different keys until one's
ridges matched enough to move.
Branches, no cars, just branches
like arteries pumping night,
but more like baler's twine.

She preferred to take her smoke
break in the bathroom facing
the mirror, losing herself
with each deep breath on the
soapstreak glass.
The single was her
speakeasy, her dressing room,
her long, French cigarette parting
her lips to keep her lipstick from
gluing them shut. She pulled on the
paper towel lever for a temp lover
to kiss until her lips stopped bleeding
Revlon. And the tissue lay balled up
in the trash
having only known her tar love
for a few moments.

I'm studying my surroundings
because I don't want to throw a white
sheet over reality and lie about
what's underneath.

I'm fighting the urge to rhyme
because I don't want to have to mix
and wrench words to speak my mind.

I'm suppressing fits of profound speech
because I don't want to shift diction
to sound older or wiser than I am.

I set a table up outside
because I don't want to write inside
my head.

I'm tracing leaves, watching cars pass,
and sipping tea because I don't want
to guess.

The fridge droned between the sound
of her impaired footsteps across
the 600 grit linoleum floor. She ran
my palms against the cave-like walls.
Eroded paint bubbling like balloons
before bursting, flattening beneath
her touch. She felt the key rack
with more keys than a piano store,
cork board with porcupine thumbtacks,
and the thin edge of the Disney calendar
beside the light switch. Patting the blood
off on her pant leg, she flipped the switch.
With her sleeve, she brushed crushed Oreos
from the table and sat. Scatted about
the stained mahogany was a few National
ENQUIRER subscription cards, used napkins,
and an overdue bank notice. Sliding the chair
back, she sulked to the switch and flipped it
back.

Keep-A-Breast
                                 Apple
             OtterBox
                                                    Acu-Rite
    Dial                                                                Aquafresh
                        Oral-B
        ACT                                Garnier                                           Equate
    Hanes
On the Byas  
                            Rude
                                                        Toms
                                Dakine
                                                                 Acu-Vue  
Ponds                                                                                         Degree
  Preferred Stock    
                                    Mighty Wallet
                                              Hot Topic
                     Keurig                                        Dixie
                                                                                               Donut Shop
Domino

International Delight

                                 Peter Paul's
Best Yet                                                            Great Value

                                        Instagram
Facebook
        Snapchat                                           Yik Yak
                                                                              Forever 21

                Adventure Time
FSC                                     Bic                 The Poetry Foundation
             Staedtler                               Pilot                Sharpie            Microsoft
The Norton Anthology
  

                                                         Toshiba            Dell          Expo
Lipton  
Emerica
Anti Hero                                MOB                   Shorty's

               Bones               Thunder  
                                                                                        Shake Junt
                                                                                       Swingline
                                                                                      Pandora
Tommy Hilfiger

'                            Jill                Greg                 Ashley          Courtney

Judy
Bob
Janice                    
Shannon                                                                                   Kelly

Robert                                 Emily                  Jeremy      Darrin      Liza

Bill                Joe                         Dominic            Sean              James

Gav                             Jordan                   Tony              Eric


Christopher

Haircut stairwell.
Linoleum floor, walls, door,
dog, clippers. Hair like smoke.
Temporary carpet.
Peppermint/cinnamon disk
medley by the hemp shampoo.
Eleven dollars.
Buzzteethscrewnostrils
and a cordedtail kiss my neck,
leaving behind plasma lipstick.
Six dollars.
Fish-scale table.
Rip a twenty, place face-down,
so Andy won't have to watch
you go.

The esophageal chill of fresh rain paired
with Bozek's tire stove undertones
slipped through the chain link tennis court.
Love all, love-fifteen, love-thirty, love-forty, game.
I love you, service box Suns, fault one fault lines,
Grandma's crochet centerpiece. Cornucopia coping
with deuce, add.  in, deuce, add. out, deuce,
you get it. Lost ***** in the transformer pen beside
the playground where I watched my classmates
fall off the monkey bars and expose themselves daily.
Racket strings like pantyhose girls surrounding
the sink applying lipstick and stabbing each other dead.
They don't need monkey bars to show off.
Slice serve pizza at Pudgies to kids barely making it.
Grades lower than the pepperoni from the seedy
gas station they sit in and thumb-spike quarters
into each other's knuckles. The "grown-ups"
buy instant lottery and feverishly **** the tickets
with misplaced pennies, and then toss the moneywastes
when they score a free ticket. Free ticket to what?
The tennis match in Addison so far away?
A clear view through chain link?
A wet, elm bench some kid made in shop class?
An alternative to what we waste our lives on?
******, marijuana, drinking at the basketball court, and
flicking cigarette filters into Berger Lake like we're hot ****.
We are ****, not the ****.
Just ****.

Sliding wounds were patched
up with concession stand napkins.
Wads of Big League Chew formed
a mosaic beneath the bench
and smelled like apple cherry.
Spat-out sunflower seed trim
lined the cracking cinder block walls
and became the popular hiding spot
for hair ties and M&Ms.; Lead
paint peeled from the walls in strips
like the white chalk lines
of the diamond beyond the fence.

Gunmetal Christmas socks pulled
past the calf like go-getter high school
girls "rocking" rainbow ******* below
the belt loops. I never went a day
without seeing short shorts and socks
replacing pant legs with a gap at the knee
to breathe. Downplay X-mas with black
jeans thinning 'bove the knees. I guess
it's payback for all the surly Santas
paid per nervous child lapdance
that got ******* out of $1.50
because I walked away.
For all the St. Nicks breathing pressurized
bourbon on little kids' wishlists.
Thread through a burgundy belt frayed
by the buckle teeth. And I'm sure this is really
burgundy, probably the only burgundy I never
questioned much, unless the manufacturer's
lying to me. Unless it's really a flexible case
for wild circuits and tiny open mics in bars
going on 'round the clock. Not just Tuesdays.
Fiber optics around my waist transmitting
telephone transmissions and cybernetic ****
monitoring my hips and what my **** does.
And my thoughts; they're ******* taking
my thoughts. Precious poetry lines lost
to the scarcity of pens in my car, when I'll
shave next, whether or not I want a burr grinder,
if I'll break glasses at work and have to drink
the glitters like iced tea from the hardwood floor.
Maybe I'll cut my gums. Maybe my tongue'll
become a chandelier butterfly and carry
me to Coudersport or Elmira or Nowhere
to watch pregnant teenagers push flat-tire
shopping carts ******-shaking in the newborn
section. Their babies are spitting up Gerber plans
Mom has never considered. Baby's just a rock rolling
down the birth canal that may someday end up
a boulder in a state park.

The radio across the room
doesn't play FM, but that's okay.
I'm content with static propaganda,
and a cat biting at my pant leg.
I guess China won and the debt
ceiling doesn't have a fan big enough
to keep all of Capitol Hill cool.
I have a fan still in a box in my bedroom
beneath ***** clothes and empty folders.
I could be the solution to Washington's problems,
but I feel better holding out.

I pressed my back against a cold
bench textured like vinyl records.
The teens that sit here spin
gossip like forty-fives before
the subway train stops. Their black
nails dig the city groove
of ears popping and the hopscotch
skips above. A man strums
his steel guitar to the beat
of footsteps echoing through
the tunnels. Like a tambourine,
the kids’ loose change bounces
off the concrete muffled
by his distressed Yankees cap.
They won’t miss the feeling
of Abe Lincoln’s *****, copper
beard between their fingers.
*More room to bury their fists
and dig the city groove.

My car came in a close second, bobbing
on the trailer with the concrete tides.
Three feet behind the black, flaked tailgate that kept a Rubbermaid cooler and rusted chains from shattering passing lane windshields on a daily basis. I'm a truck bed and three feet away from my alabaster beauty, and I felt like I was driving it. Window drawn into the door, my left wrist idle
on the wheel, and an evergreen air freshener bobbing with the concrete tides.

He wanted to please her as he had when they were fifteen,
she just wanted sleep.
“Please, I’m not in the mood tonight,” she groaned,
and turned towards the threshold of their bedroom.
She fixed her attention to the clatter of dishes displacing water
she was too tired to change.
Her wine glasses were closer than they were in the sink.
He turned his thoughts to the constant hum of the street light
outside their window,
and thought of this marriage.

Our box fans inhale and puff smoke,
blanketing the couch like a carcinogenic throw.
The lung cushions decay beneath us.
We fall.
We dissipate on the sidewalk with one
thumb sweep of the filter.
Stashed luggage beneath bus seats.
Springs puncture the faux leather
like we're sitting on quills dipped
in bloodwells writing poetry by several
haphazard candles. Wicks crackling
with each lap of the flame four inches
from our faces momentarily relieved
of windburn by scrawny fingers desperately
flicking to keep the spark caught.
We're caught.
Caught in this couch wrapped up
in a carcinogenic throw burning.

Lunch rush was hell for the new girl,
stacking foamed cappuccino cups
and stirring spoons in a broken-handled
bus tub while trying not to slip
on soft ice and discarded lemon
wedges. She took our mugs,
and told us about a guy

—Dave, she said. I don't know.—who sat
with his friend, comparing *** to work
over the rusted cabinet tracks
of his warped fork scraping
his egg-caked plate.
Dave's friend was leaned in
with a cocked grin waiting
for one of Dave's "Classic Dave" punchlines,

which I'm guessing are all witty,
the funniest *******
things you've ever heard,
but there wasn't one
this time

because there's nothing funny about
a ***** intern cringing beneath the weight
of fat Dave and his brick
paperweight jammed in her back.

A woman watched her daughter
cry through the bottom of a shot
glass. As the last few drops of whiskey
passed her lips and tongue stud,
she closed her eyes tight and inhaled
the scent of cigarettes and Pledge.
Her daughter's spill tray was spotted
with tears, Cheerios, and formula
running down her chin like sweat.
The woman picked a giraffe baby
blanket up from the twisted carpet
fibers and swaddled her head, trying
to find silence. The baby screamed
louder, her face turning cranberry
red. The woman pressed her palms
hard against her covered ears
while sliding back on the couch, causing
her to kick the coffee table before her.
The shot glass rolled off and bounced
on the floor at her feet.

Everything she said hit his eardrum
like a rimshot. Maybe he was losing
his hearing or she was just losing
his attention. Dinner conversations
across a two foot table flew past
him like houseflies. With her soft,
blonde hair blanketing his collarbone,
her mouth seemed to pantomime
more the closer he leaned in.

East Hall Coop purrs, caged
in tough chicken wire. Third story Beta beaks cluck from their nest, threatening crickets nestled
in the humid grass finding shelter
from rowdy farmhands marching
the birds to slaughter. Cattail stems, moonshine bottles, even colored gloves straight from the box lie in the grass.

I’m whittling down my track list
to keep my iPod’s song count
from reaching 1,000. Rare Beatles
tracks, a famous Lennon interview,
less-than-great Punk Goes Pop
covers, and some jams I haven’t
played since 2005. Complete albums
are now only half full because some cover
art is better than the lyrics in the pages.

—For Tom Surdam

Town's quiet—
aside from the timid
waltz of a porch-swing
wind chime and the backyard cricket
kingdoms. I passed the funeral
apartments, the static cat,
and the bar stool where my uncle
wore his soul sore on steel strings
in a wooden shot glass.
He was a good man, a cigarette
saint with a pacemaker scab. A tavern
sweetheart with a memory made
of drink chips and Marlboro foil.

I saw an asphalt toad on the bridge
bathing in the ghost glint of the only
stop light in town beside another
that was smeared like house paint
just inches from the storm drain,
from home.

Sheepishly held-down dental floss
guitar strings and cracked hands
like sink-side toothpaste.
Cuspid picks in a mint-scented, plastic bag beneath textbooks
and a zipper rusted like gingivitis.
A backstage house of pamphlets
slurred time like novocaine speech. Thirty-two people sat at coffee-stained tables talking about their routines between sips of créme de menthe cocktails and water.
Fluoride lyrics dripped from his mouth as people closed theirs.

Third floor psych ward window lookout,
second from the right on the east side.
Best seat available, padded, from 1934.
Backrest Swingline-stapled to the faux-
Maple leg support 2 x 4s. Beige bedspread,
white walls blend into the door threshold
that people are honeymoon'd
through kicking the aids, clawing at their eyes.

But Téa sat there watching the overcast
shadows sweep the sky heavily
like the watercolor paintings on the group
room plastic table where ******-off
preteens paint Dad beating them,
or Sis dying in a car crash.

Téa just sat there while the stagnant Valley
tumbled dry low outside, tuning out
a black patient behind her riling-up
another fight with a plastic-hinged
particleboard door.

Swinging.

I’ve always wanted the artist lifestyle
even though I paint with words.
I’ve always wanted unfinished paintings
taking up space in an East Village apartment
with acrylic stains on a futon. I want those late
nights awake creating, making sure every idea
is brushed against a canvas’ grain before it’s swept
beneath my worries of utility bills and eviction
notices. I want to see possibility in everything,
and I want to push everything to its limits.
*I want to be so ******* close to the edge
that I could misstep and die at any moment.

No mad coffee shop
emotions make time real be-
tween jazz consciousness—
and the taste of sound howls for
soul on city gas
beaches that work naked like
***, like sleep; selling
ev'ry beatnik book in some
village.

Cats improvise god in barely-there clubs,
so cigarette smoke music can be cool forever.
The slide guitar, gutter trombones, the sax,
drums beat into submission, and
that voice scatting softly but strong
like hail in the scrap yard.

Be-bop skiddly bop do-*** skiddly bop.

Those lips crack off dryer barrels, blender bases,
alarm clock cord plugs rapping on the dumpster.
Those teeth chew out heels on pavement, police
tires on gravel driveways, the 8:15 bus' hiss hydraulics.
That soul.
His soul.
Is just that.

Dizzied by a porch swing's varnish Chloroform,
I shared a silver hook with a knotted rope
snake for stability. Although my finger
constricted the viper against the cold metal,
it did not hiss or spit psychedelic venom.
I braced my bare foot against the truck's
wheel cover around a twisted corner
by an empty church, tolling
my heartbeat. Cardboard acted
as the bed liner, I played the liability
if the swing should slide past the flush tailgate
and take me along with it. If it did,
shifting gravel guitar solos and cherry pie blood
would swing my pain away.

I followed a mob march of taillights
back from work. Two rows of thirty flames
spaced out streaked the darkness
beneath the looming sparkler
adding stars to midnight sky.
Roman candle travelers eager to burn
out tried to shoot past traffic
on slivers of unoccupied sidewalk.
The closer they got to town,
the more stars faded above
their hoard of torches.

Wade feeling around Jess' waist.
• ******
• Heat
• Wedding ring
○ Tucked away
87 unleaded
& Tuesday ham.

From across the hall, I watched her double
over Coleridge, sympathizing as she looked
up to the thin curtain filtering the street-light
universe past the pane held in hot glue.
The click-heels, car barks, ceaseless L-Train
turnstiles, tipsy choirs in cracked-door taverns,
hinges, keys on carabiners, bus hydraulics,
the wall clock, and her fingers caressing the page.
She loved a soft wind carrying birdsong
through screen doors and dowel chimes.
She used to leave her shoes lace-tangled
by the key rack until she saw glass pollen
sparkling in a caged tulip blossom.
She raised the book and sullenly whispered
the last stanza of Frost at Midnight
into the spine, wondering how anyone
could live away from impressionist-dandelion
forests, children's plastic toys in the front yard,
and church bells at every hour.

I wondered the same thing.

Modern and Contemporary Poetry
takes up most of the passenger seat.
Pages' edges ruffled like the balled-up polo I'm wearing. Tommy Hilfiger'd
be rolling in his millions. Twenty minutes till work's screen door crashes on the frame twice before settling. Three salad plates, a skillet, and two jars of unsweetened tea condensate
on the metal counter. They soak dinner bills and paper towel coasters.
The front door vacuum seals behind sandal families reeking of Chlorine
and hairspray. Beachy look. Three more families crowd in behind them, taking turns sifting through the hostess desk peppermints for discarded toothpicks. Reservations for 7:00 come in at 6:50 and demand a table. They're  just like the mints packed tightly
in the lobby, but there are a few patient ones at the bottom.  They're the ones that inspire stanzas in **Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the college textbook waiting on my passenger seat. *Three more hours.

Beneath
a Marlboro
hat was his faded straight
pin and rake tine hair in patches.

A carton of Light
100's glowed house fire red
in the cashier's hand.

He pulled a fifty and two tens
from his wallet then coughed
up blood into
his sleeve.

I just hope my brain doesn't
slow too much before I die
and I hope I never stop dreaming.
When everyone else is on
their stomachs in their graves,
I hope I'm looking at the stars.

I sat beside my window and listened
to the dragging of heels and drunken laughter
four floors below. I pulled the plug from my outlet
to let in the sound of two strangers having ***,
so I could see if there really was a difference between
what happens between two people and what happens
in the midst of mindless company. I paid the landlord
in Monopoly money. Soon enough, I'll have to pay the rent
of Boardwalk for an apartment on Baltic Avenue.
She told me she'd be over after she ate, but I didn't
want her to rush it. I can wait.
Take all the time she needs
to make memories out of broken bottles
and bent caps. Clothes all seem to melt away
when ***** slides past ladies' lips, but I know my girl
has a Solo cup of tap water between her knees.
That is why I wait for her.

Cement patch brick twenty dollar bills.
Sidewalk with f i g u r e d steps figure
skating around Bazooka Joe and Joe
Camel sharing banana split menthol
kisses beneath Atlas' golden world.
Idealism, baby.
We gold-stripe fine Chinet, fine clothes,
a broach laden with Leda swan feathers.
Plastic-tipped felt strips wound with
a straight paperclip.
That Ginsberg belt & pleated pants +
ruffled shirt. Seinfeld, Central Perk,
and Easthampton. Flip through
conceptual art book with art
still inside your glowing, artistic
mind. Reverse countersink
a media bit / Craftsman
holds it still. Teal X (Tilex)
on a Chuck Taylor floor
so clean, sparkle, innocent,
blind, oblivious, ignorant,
narcissistic, sparkle, spark
me up but don't let me help
you find your face in the dark.
Hold the gun, ease the trigger,
ignore the twisting hair and wet
shoulder. Forget the shreikscreechscream,
it's only jazz.