#motel
i have traveled a long way
to be waiting in a cheap motel
passing time reading the words
of dead russian poets
waiting for you to arrive.
four am is especially bleak,
and no restless sleep is
as purely restless,
no sound
more angry forlorn and
temporary than cars on the
highway besides.
i would never know by your voice
filtered by space and electronics
what is moving through you.
i must look in to you.
so i wait now for you to knock,
alone in the company of
pasternak's tears
until i see you and understand you
are well.
Sep 23, 2025
Sep 23, 2025 at 2:37 AM UTC
I had been sober for
awhile and was getting that
itch to drink.
I couldn't recall the
degradation and misery of
the last drunk a few months
earlier.
It was spring, and I was standing
outside of the flophouse, I was
staying at.
Just then, a big sunflower of
a woman walked by.
"Hi Jenny," I said.
We had a past.
Not much of one though.
It resembled a Dali painting that
had been soaking in the rain.
We ended up in a motel with a
bottle of Absinthe.
Jenny wasn't much of a drinker,
No problem, more for me.
Jenny wasn't much of a
conversationalist, and half-lit on
robust ***** neither was I.
I walked around the room talking
about Hemingway and Van Gogh,
Fitzgerald and Picasso.
Jenny wasn't interested in them.
She wanted me to score her some dope.
She said, "If you want this ***** you
will buy me an eight ball."
I didn't.
I wanted to write, but I was too drunk.
We wanted different things and neither
of us
found them that night.
And later at about 3 am when I got
up to **** I could have sworn I saw the
picture of Van Gogh on the box of Absinthe
laughing.
Mar 23, 2025
Mar 23, 2025 at 6:45 PM UTC
~
She draws water from the well, an old drink for new clientele. She "loves" living next to airports, big shiny airports, named after gruesome visionaries and drunk, womanizing actor sorts. She "loves" wearing a Chinese dress and sitting in a Chinese chair, posing for pictures she can never share.
~
Dec 14, 2023
Dec 14, 2023 at 2:51 PM UTC
Riding the bus at night
is one of my few comforts in life.
Reminds me of happy days,
returning home from the park.
I remember a tall white building
standing, reaching for the dark sky
with red neon lights spelling "MOTEL"
I felt compelled to come inside.
Sep 26, 2021
Sep 26, 2021 at 10:12 PM UTC
Razor tucked in the fixture
base
That and the dull-fluorescent-light
stare me
Dead
in the face
Was it put there
just in case?
How did they know to find me here
in this place?
I guess
it's just another convenience
in another
mini-life-space
Little shampoo for your hair
Little soap for your hands
Little lotion for your skin
Little blade for your sins
and a sink in which to
Erase
All just such
a
convenient
little
Waste
Nov 1, 2020
Nov 1, 2020 at 12:14 PM UTC
but no darling,
motels get me down and i don't want to shed tears
behind the walls on clean sheets slept on by many,
you don't want to hear my heart creaking,
and you certainly don't want to understand it
Aug 16, 2020
Aug 16, 2020 at 7:14 AM UTC
the osprey flys overhead, but the baby rabbit trembles not
~for any grandparent-poet lurking about~
the osprey overflies, a regularity scheduled patrol over
our backyard emporium and all its hors d’oeuvre creatures,
***** has parental responsibilities, beaks to feed, PTA conferences,
the pilot, a wary watchful animal-his-rights guy, catalogues their still living existentialism, for though they are not fish, his diet of preference, but in a pinch a rodent or rabbit stew will do, if the fish are running too deep for no warming sun beckoning them to the surface.
Motel^ the baby rabbit, who lives with his parents,
(who doesn’t these days?) beneath the deck,
chews the clover overnight sprung, blissfully i g n o r a n t,
unawares or ignoring the poet be-laureating (him-her) but a mere
few feet above and away, pays no attention to the Poppy’s (grandfather) lecture about the rules of the animal kingdom,
who, eats whom, and to be more attentive to flying raptors.
thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon, severe say
the textured textual phone-netical all green messages, which
of course is a signal signal to the sun his job is done and can
leave the untanned poet in his state of original sin, soooo deliciously
white that he earns an appraising glance from eyes of the osprey,
a privilege he would happily tan away to promote equality ‘n stuff like peace on earth.
Motel, with his thermometer-humidity nasal instrumentation twitcher, decides, after chewing it over most carefully, time to go underneath where the white half naked people domicile, in order to avoid bathing, not his fav pastime, but making the osprey quitter le ciel, which is French for get out of Dodge, they got babies of their own to shelter and protect, even feed.
The Poppy, contented, thinks to himself, god couldn’t be everywhere,
so he invented grandpas to be “En Loco Parentis” which
Does Not Mean Instead of Crazy Parents,
but easily could,
for who else writes
poems like this?
Jul 5, 2020
Jul 5, 2020 at 1:08 PM UTC
meet me by the motel
by the Nobel boulevard
we don’t have to tell
no more being apart
meet me by the motel
by the Nobel boulevard
with the casted spell
we don’t got no regards
so tell everybody
we hit the reject
we ain’t sorry
they gotta respect
Apr 13, 2020
Apr 13, 2020 at 11:05 PM UTC
somewhere in hollywood along route 66
stood a cheap motel—
an asylum
for rockstars and their groupies,
artists and and poets and strangelings alike.
the morning only saw its residents,
drunken and drowsy,
and its black-tiled pools as dark as the night;
yet the nights were its prime
when the artists would gather
in the name of music, dance, recklessness.
the syringes would pierce their skin
and the alcohol like ocean waves
washed out the most of them,
and events too unspeakable were the norm.
the motel never attained 5-star ratings,
but it become the playground
for fleeting moments, wild nights,
brewing grounds for creation.
these nights were so loud and colorful,
but only remembered in hazy visions
and muffled sounds.
and so all those nights end here, today:
at the south of The Strip
where some modern, ordinary hotel now stands
once used to be the mess
that the likes of Jim Morrison
and Tom Waits called home.
its guests would have burnt it down,
but they would've wasted their money,
and who has the time anyway?
ladies and gentlemen, the tropicana motel—
a stop over where
wild minds and wild hearts would meet
and eventually go their way,
the place where these legends
of music and madness
came to play.
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 12:59 PM UTC
Oxblood lips. A slit in the center. A distraught film. Shattered pieces that mimic her wounds. She cries for sorrow and weeps in the name of agony. Flashback. High voltage. Dawn's dew left a Seoul night in the hands of mischief. He watched her golden legs in his dingy shirt. She danced in a tunnel of head lights. His eyes. Oh, God, his realm of roses. A spectrum so broad- no force could obtain. 70s misfit. Shaggy rugs. A cheap bottle of Merlot. Kaleidoscope kisses. Craved like a hieroglyphic. He was her warrior. Plummeting grains of virtue into a dust oriented cushion...seven dollars and thirty one cents. I saw the light bulb touch the birch-wood floral. I could feel a thick metallic wind roar. Breaking the depths. A rugged man with a festive beard. His cheeks of stained silicone lipstick. He had shipped off his soul. He was a white man with a grip of steel. "Who put cookies in the watering bucket?" A naive response. "A wicked man with a lustful cavity." Erosion.Despair.Angst. Thin braids housed a blooming mind. Paint chips splattered the table top, plastering it. Morning.Good morning to luxury. What a splendid contrast. A lantern lit van took the highway by 65 miles. And all the while he never looked back.
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 9:13 AM UTC
Bird Motel
never to settle
only a stop
on a journey
I hope you enjoy your stay
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 10:51 AM UTC
that night, I saw bodies in the motel bathtub
beckoning like a 50's Cadillac
back seat beats and Father's
bottle of snatched brandy up
to bring back our youth
and stay
for one last whisper in a last-innocent ear
the diner lights buzzing like
a lifetime of loss to mistakes
that can be little more or
less than broken glass lies
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 9:28 PM UTC
Huddled in a cocoon of my own grime
Forlorn and wasted from my own trick
“She's hot,” she says from across the
Room filled with helium and gauze
You don't need words to make a statement
It's very difficult to be that *****
I suffer from delusions of
Illusions of grandeur
Pomp and circumstance
My theme song
I've graduated to this degree of decadence
Or is it dereliction?
I always get those two confused
Which is the one where
Ripple wine and crack *******
Are preferable to
Caviar and pink champagne?
No matter
I am equally distant from both
“Who does that,” she mutters
As she watches a
Woman in stilettos
Being urinated on by a
Hairy man on the *** channel
I sit with my ink pen and
Draw black eyes on the
Models in women's magazines
She turns to me
“Are you even listening?”
This pale, shelled out
Husk of a former woman asks
I'm listening
I retort within my own shackled mind
But if I pay attention
I just may **** us both
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 9:06 PM UTC
I didn't know anything about a ******
I was called from sleep to be told your love had died
The lanes and lights passing you by
But your path never strayed
Your mind became lost
Because the enduring sounds of the waves
Kept you up at night
I'm still here
And now, a knock resonates at my motel door
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015 at 6:59 PM UTC
I hate Dallas
But the hotels nice
Well, at least the view is
See it?
Beautiful isn’t it.
That was earlier today.
Now I’m here
Just standing here ****
In front of this window
I’m wishing someone to see me
For a good laugh
Or
Maybe they will muster up the courage to come knock on my door
Even with the Do Not Disturb Sign hanging from the ****
It’s something about hotels that gets me thinking this way
Out of sorts and more so in the gutter
To think of all the love made between these walls
Passionate - married, unmarried, one night stands, flings…
the good, the bad, and the really REALLY bad
I imagine more of the third
I’m not this way at home
I lay content in my cotton sheets with the occasional hum of a car passing
But here, in this hotel looking out 26 stories above the city
All I want is you…against me
Until the sun rises
Where we will carry on
Go back to our lives
In silence
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 12:03 AM UTC
it's four am,
and i am lying in
the bed that cracks
every time somebody
touches it,
just like i me.
and i stare at the ceiling,
thinking about my
****** up life
and how i will
run away even
further.
i m just hoping
that nobody will
be looking for me and
nobody will find me,
because i do not
want to be found.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 7:29 AM UTC