There’s something so comforting
In trading in everything
The taking and giving
Of motherhood

What does it mean to be whole?
Shifting your insides around an additional soul?
The pain and the toll
Of motherhood

How to express
The vastness of universes
Alongside the mundane  
Of getting dressed in the morning?

There’s something so absolute
Something so boundlessly true
In the brown of the root and the red of the fruit
In the green of the shoots
Of motherhood

First I was disgusted:
It was you that I despised,

And now my edge is blunted:
I am terrible in kind.

In the context of things unknown
the leaves have fallen far into these doubts roads I travelled on summer's humid days now pinpricked with touches of gold
wheels blast past,
and the remnants of this past year rustle, there is a mystery in the coolness of this air will winter be one we can still bear?

In the context of things known,
I leave memories of all our growth
under the shade of baring branches
as days go by,
they'll be buried under the delicacies of fall until next year,
when the burden of the snow
has shifted their weight
I'll be back to bury more

Do as you thrive,
-Oops,
I must of seen the temptation in your eyes,
While catching a bit of summer in your smile
****, never thought it could be much brighter
Inside;- still for a while, I'll give it all a second chance,
Having you for seconds, in time and a meal of love
Still I'll put you first, grinding my gears in my mind
I'm always a better takeoff in second

-Wait, wait,
Don't you ever rush me to say, "I love you"
That's a bit of a touchy subject, for someone who hasn't
Been touched in a while. But it's good of you, to touch
Me on my left side, which is the right side for an honest smile

Honestly,
I'm not looking to be your next guy, the other guy, the new guy,
Or even at least YOUR guy,- just call me a friend, for being perfect
Friends at the start; give me some time to get a little close to you
I'm still opening up my heart

The self delusion, of inclusion
I skip a few steps to a conclusion
Being walked over; what's the conclusion
With just a hint of acceptance,- still a bit clueless
And a bit full of myself, but mostly foolish
Trying to live life twice, with a bucket list full of ice;
There's always that cold stare in my eyes; all jokes aside,
Society is always just a ride, and a few nights before,
I had lost my license for having a drive, still putting
All the many, many leftovers of my mind to the side
An appetite for destruction; a self destructive path,
All walks of life, and a few steps into showing my wrath
Sometimes a bit too dark; forgetting the oil in my lamp
But I get too comfortable in loneliness,- on depression's lap
I sold all of my wounds, but wound up feeling a loss,
At every cost of being too holy, as the holes in old socks
A really stinky attitude, stingy for showing any form of love,
I held on my arm, armed with a crude remark, just for who you are
And like this piece, everything seems to be happening far too long
////
////
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For the old me and for us both, it's time to stop!

If you get the chance, check out Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems by Thomas W. Case.  It's available on all formats on Amazon

on ruby jacobs walk, a
small girl
asked us for money for ice cream.

she eyed our cones
                                yours, lemon
                                mine, strawberry
with a child’s hunger
glinting and opportunistic
as she held out her palm for coins.

i was not yet accustomed to the shapes and sizes,
to a dime being smaller than a nickel,
and in any case wanted to preserve them for souvenirs
so we shook our heads and walked away.

a year later, writing this poem,
i learned that ruby jacobs was a local restauranteur
who, as a boy,
illegally sold ice creams
for a nickel on the boardwalk.
                                                a nickel is the larger coin
                                                the size of a ten pence piece.
                                                i know that now.

the wide atlantic rose from a sloping manicured lawn
        star-spangled,
                                like everything here,
                                                           ­     the airborne flag
                                                            ­    above a wide pavilion
                                                        ­        a fanatic wedding cake topper
                                                          ­      against the blood-blue sky.

        i slipped
out of my shoes and let
the white sand burn my feet,
and jaggedly fill the spaces between my toes.

the atlantic held open its arms
though we weren’t, as we imagined,
                looking east
                looking home
but south to new jersey, across the bay.

the gnarled boardwalk was a
song of the twentieth century
        a roll-call of mass-market capitalism
        here in the city that didn’t invent the concept
        but certainly perfected it:
                                                hot dogs
                                        amusements
         ­                       ice creams (we’ve covered that)
                        fridge magnets
                baseball caps
        i bought an espresso cup with a picture of the president
and the caption:
                         ‘huuuuge!’
i stopped to take a photograph
of a space-age building from the fifties
which turned out to be
                                        a public toilet.

later
from the sunbaked d train,
brooklyn spread out beneath us
the houses garnished with flags,
then the city coughed us up on seventh avenue
and night fell five hours early.

I've talked to all the ghosts in this room
They speak of memories and grievances
And we revel in how quickly this fog has turned into smoke
It bites at my lungs
And I sit and wait, my eyes on my hands
My ears on the clock
At some point, each passing second
Parallels my heartbeat
There is someone across from me
Saying it is time to let go
But what would be left of me
If this grief vanished, too
At some point, it became all I am

Until you
somehow stumbled into this room
untethering the past from all that I knew

I scurry around the kitchen floor
Picking up the crumbs I find.
This is not the life we asked for,
But the 'adults' play deaf, dumb and blind.

I am afraid that this is my home,
Though, I know you do not want me here,
But where else do I have to roam?
Outside gets cold this time of year.

So I scuttle from the kitchen to my room,
Hot in the knowledge that I am disgusting.
Society would have the streets, my tomb
To spend eternity in entropy, rusting.

Like the Cockroach
We are victims of circumstance,
But we know our enemy and wait
For a call to arms, for our chance.