"awning" poems
Before walking through the doorway
Made of trash bags
A woman checked our ID’s
We passed the booth with the feathers and the ball-gags
Passed the woman selling *** toys
Just a white awning with plastic chairs
We sat and watched a man dressed in leather
He was the kind of expert who understood his passion
But for him there was no teaching it
Beer saturated my white shirt
As I sweated it out
I could feel the alcohol in my lungs
I breathed slower as if it would hide the sensation
He explained to us puppy play
The dynamics
He had his own puppy with him
A man so good at making wet eyes
So good at seeming lost
He barked and wagged an invisible tail
Chewed on rope
Probably he thought about burying his bone
What his wife might be making for dinner
Wondered if I had recognized him as a regular
At my work
While taking questions the leather man said
It takes time to discover the puppy inside
It makes me think of how
In order to view ourselves as anything
We need a filter
I want you to **** me
With a ****** full of yes
I told them
If I were a puppy
I would be very stupid
But great to cuddle
We can admit these things about ourselves
While in character
If I tell you
I am pretending to be anything
I can still find ways to pretend to be me
It is like an electric chair
Disguised as a lazy boy
It will not hold you for long
Your skin does not fit proper
It makes me think of my father
The Clown
Who bent me into shape
With his balloon animal breath
Only he had asthma
The empty static
My inner puppy
Is a half deflated balloon poodle
Ends pulled tight like amputee sausage link limbs
Looking lost and lonely isn’t hard
What’s hard about it is
Looking like that was your intention
In character
Some invisible narrator
I can admit anything
Jul 28, 2012
Jul 28, 2012 at 4:28 PM UTC
"A patient man bides his time,"
Theodore tells the man in the mirror
Tomorrow, all the levees will break
And all the fables will be told
Of distant Decembers and forgotten fathers
Livelihoods will be threatened
And remorse will fall by the wayside
He watches as icicles on the awning
Melt away into puddles on the ground
"Warmer every day," he thinks to himself
He hangs up his scarf and overcoat
The way a simple man, with complex demons, is wont to do
And as his wants devolve into needs
And as all his anchors deteriorate to rust
Her smile unnerves a once-settled man
To think of the quality of glove necessary
To hold onto the wagon in this day and age
So Theodore pulls the door to,
Leaving Chopin's "Horseman" to gallop in peace
And in pieces
He watches her from across the courtyard
"Such sweet bliss in her footsteps," he sighs
And it seems to him as if the snow dissipates
Just from the warmth in her steady gait
Just from the radiation behind her brown eyes
He slides open the dresser drawer
A haven for scattered trinkets, odds, and ends
A place of respite for the weary souvenir
There, amidst all the corroded memories
Lies a corroded pistol, unspoken and unburnished
"And a lonely man drinks his wine,"
Theodore says, as intrepidly as he is capable
For there is a time when fathers stop teaching
A time when mothers stop singing
And a place where the sins stop searching
A last breath is deeply inhaled
But never again will find its escape
With a thud that echoes to Seymour Street
Theodore crumples to the cold wooden floor,
A simple man, finally free of complex demons
Jan 25, 2023
Jan 25, 2023 at 1:19 PM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
Don’t drink the elixir
That he’s trying to sell
If you start believing him
He'll catch you in his spell
Avoid the snake oil salesman
At all and any cost
If you follow his advice
You’ll truly be lost
He’s a snake oil salesman
Traveling state to state
Trying to sell his portion
That you're gonna learn to hate
(2nd Verse)
Don’t drink his elixir
Though pleasant to the taste
Some have bought it wholesale
Others by the case
Don’t believe the claims
The snake oil salesman makes
He’ll say or do anything
That he thinks it takes
He’s a snake oil salesman
Traveling state to state
Trying to sell his portion
That you're gonna learn to hate
He’ll never reveal what’s inside
Of his opaque bottle
But he wants you to take the ride
While he goes full throttle
He’s a snake oil salesman
You better heed my warning
It might be too late
Once you’re underneath his awning
He’s a snake oil salesman
I’ve told you once before
Cuz it’s at your own peril
If you choose to ignore
He’s a snake oil salesman
Traveling state to state
Trying to sell his portion
That you'll learn to hate
Don’t drink his elixir
Though pleasant to the taste
Some have bought it wholesale
Others by the case
Don’t believe the claims
The snake oil salesman makes
He’ll say or do anything
That he thinks it takes
Cedric McClester, Copyright (c) 2016. All rights reserved.
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 19, 2016 at 8:55 PM UTC
He weaves slowly between the tables
at Buongiorno's
stooping over each diner's ear
close and intimate as a lover
He asks if they can spare a little
money for his lunch
He's gaunt each cheek shadowed hollow
his skin bleached white as bone
Each vertebrae is marked prominent
Each finger skeltonic thin
Unsocked, in shoes laced with knots of string
leather uppers baked, cracked and crazy creased
His hair is dry-straggle stalks of corn
Eyes hold a stare that fixes fast the lies
He cuts a powerful figure under that cosy awning
though some name him worthless beggar
Fearless of taunts and titles offered from shamemongers
and well-respected-men-about-town
there is no guilt in asking for your basic needs
from the latte-ccino mob who have so much to spare.
© M.L.Emmett
Sep 23, 2014
Sep 23, 2014 at 8:23 AM UTC
She ain't depressed, she sings all day
Songs of another devil
Saw a dog, stilted awning dance
Stay, another day
Still awake, dreaming
Sleeping at daybreak though
Silky and delicate
Submissive, absolute danger
Salted, assaulted, decompression
**** another detail written
Seasonal affective disorder
Sadly attained death
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 9:49 AM UTC
Gilhooley had ordered a meeting
Everyone had to come round
St. Patricks day will be upon us
And a venue just has to be found
We have to find somewhere authentic
Our normal old pub just won't do
We can't celebrate with the punters
Where the beer isn't green, it's dyed blue
Gilhooley awaited suggestions
It had to be somewhere close by
There were all sorts of names on the table
So they decided to give them a try
It needed to be "somewhat old Irish"
with no dee jay, and a folky type band
they had to have red headed women
And a barman, with drinks poured and at hand
The first place they went was McKenna's
It seemed like a great place at first
but the service was slower than treacle
and a man would just die here of thirst
They found one that looked rather Irish
It was known as the new *** of gold
it had a rainbow outside on the awning
this should have been a warning fortold
the next one they tried was a classic
The green and gold tavern....a hit
but, it was booked on the day for a party
and this didn't please them one bit
they finally found one to their liking
full of guineess and pretty colleens
a punjabi bar by the name of ben doury's
where everything was curried and green
it was a party that no one remembered
that meant that it must have been good
nobody went to the jailhouse
even though three or four of them should
The beer and the curry were epic
the singing was like nothing we'd heard
a sitar and cymbal based trio
played so loud that nothing was heard
Gilhooley said next year we have to
come back here and do it again
It was the best St. Patty's ever
most of them passed out by ten
The next time you go out to party
call Ben Doury, the place is spot on
the food and the beer are one colour
with a Punjabi Mumbai Leprachaun
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 11:51 PM UTC
‘Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme
That I know by heart,
And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans tall
Over a table of solid rock,
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow boiling voice it speaks
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.’
‘And why gives this the only prime
Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?’
‘Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though precisely where none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalized,
Is a grinking glass:
For, down that pass
My lover and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I ****** my arm below
Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade’s rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
‘By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.’
2.7k
my program is a lost signal
overweight styrofoam rubbing
muddled in hangover hair
choke back the over spill
language will clog the drain
bulky, fatigued under the awning
cruised to isle tempi passati
surfed a certain drift,
definite
your flexing dedication was
heat exhaled into a humbled room wearing a sweatshirt/sweat pant combo with the comforter pulled all the way up at 3 p.m. on a humid summer afternoon
sweltering
wandering mirage day trips
publicly a deaf runaway gnawing on a cactus wing
robbed of north and south
scouting for rocks half in moss
anxious I won't be home in time to see
my favorite show. doesn't need a
button to play, just some bad
luck and thunder drool
May 25, 2012
May 25, 2012 at 1:42 AM UTC
This is my street
An old street,
In an old Irish town
The people come
And then they go
In the soft rain
Of a short Irish summer
When the mood is on me
I let my feet walk
And they always
Seem to bring me here
The cafe at the end of the street
And sure,
Where else would they go?
Many is a time
I had a hearty steak sandwich
Or fishcakes with potatos
Or just a coffee and scuffin
To beat the cold outside
And it's many the friend
I found in there
Aye, and lovers too.
It's face is green and black
Milanese style
So the owners tell me
With a striped green and white awning
And simple tables and chairs
And all the love in the world
Music has been had there
And poetry, and just craic
Long Scrabble saturdays
Taken very seriously
We even bought the dictionary
To stop the heated
Word exchanges
So I know most of the people
There is always a smile
Headed in my direction
When I am blue
It brings me to life
Somewhat
And needless to say
The food is always good
It is funny, how
Friends and family
Merge sometimes
As happens
In the cafe at the end of the street
Where friends are family
And family are friends
They told me
They are closing in September
A loss like a family bereavement
I can only hope that
I find another place to go
Or maybe a new street to live on
Where I can
Walk out my door, and feel
Home
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 9:27 AM UTC
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
To see a business with empty windows
The blue building I pass by every day
With the once solid stairs only marked by a paint print
The man in the yellow jacket and the American flag shirt
Even though America is why he is walking on worn down shoes
320 on moffet, dilapidated apartments & hollow doorways
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
The blinking open sign that flickers, only welcoming ghosts
The boy who gets off the bus stop alone, walking by it without a glance
With his back pack strung tiredly over his shoulder
The universal feeling of not fitting in still fresh in his memory
The field of grass, deserted
A cemetery of parts & wheels & headlights & people's once dream machines
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
The lady who lives on 2nd near the sewer drainer
With hoards of stuffed animals waving from inside the windows
As she sits under the awning surrounded by them, smoking a cigarette with trembling fingers
The girl driving with her hands tightly gripping the steering wheel
Grinding her teeth as she watches the people she sees while on the road
Blinks slowly, as she knows home is where she is alone
But she'd rather see this road side sadness then the blank television screen
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
And she screams
As she crashes into a tree
The man in the yellow jacket turns his head
The boy's back pack falls to the ground
The women leaps up, her plush lifeless friends tumbling around her
The building are silent, remorseful
Nothing is a sadder sight to see
Feb 4, 2013
Feb 4, 2013 at 10:53 PM UTC
Tonight's grey cloud hangs over the pearlescent blue and pink of today.
The gray is an avalanche
criss-crossed
with black
powerlines
that spread like cracks in a mirror.
The rain starts to fall.
To my right is a young blonde
age (17?) unknown.
Her bag and telephone
would
match
but for a shade.
The rain starts to fall.
Young lovers kiss in the calm embrace of one another
beneath an awning the colour of
old ladies - no
boredom - no
subjugation -no.
the under side of an old mattress.
The rain starts to fall.
Across the gap stands an Asian man with the complete accoutrements of a golfer.
Obfuscated now by a train
with the palette of a McDonald's ad.
The rain starts to fall.
The streets are become slick
and every lamp bleeds the start
of an oil painting
with brushes made of light.
The air is cool.
There is a canal that stretches between seats, walled by rows of heads.
In the distance a little girl peaks her head up in the middle of all this,
she wears a bright pink plastic bow on her head that blinks and glows.
Traffic lights streak
green and red
over black gesso.
Cars streak
silver and blood
down black gesso.
"I simply don't need to cheapen things further"
Matching work uniforms.
Matching looks of boredom
Matching shoes and glances
Matching telephones
Matching lack of conversation
Matching hair
Matching matching carpet and drapes
Matching posture
why is everything matching?
(they got off at the same station)
Suburban princess holds the phone like a bible.
I attempt to sketch her arm in my head....but I am too ******
I am hungry.
The outside air is cool.
This is a carriage for the antisocial
3 rooms of solitude.
Everyone is plugged in
No-one dares to speak.
The Art of Conversation.
An old woman sits in front of me, with the face of Ray Winstone in drag.
Her hair is a dandelion
and her eyebrows are birds
painted in the distance.
Hands wrinkled and knotty
like old fruit.
Trains are predictable
the purest form of modern transport
all the little fishies
in the giant metal can
are silent to one another.
The train conductors voice is boredom.
I mistake ambient noise for music.
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 11:13 AM UTC
I do not see the hills around,
Nor mark the tints the copses wear;
I do not note the grassy ground
And constellated daisies there.
I hear not the contralto note
Of cuckoos hid on either hand,
The whirr that shakes the nighthawk’s throat
When eve’s brown awning hoods the land.
Some say each songster, tree and mead—
All eloquent of love divine—
Receives their constant careful heed:
Such keen appraisement is not mine.
The tones around me that I hear,
The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,
Are those far back ones missed when near,
And now perceived too late by me!
2.1k
Revel in space, yet not darkled, still
the **** and span of things that breeds
airlessness; The trees are evenly cut,
and their overgrowth seems like a forethought.
Where I am from, we eat fish with
our bare hands and our furniture, from bodies
of sandalwood, crushed with the scent of
peregrines. The morning makes you conscious
of space, and altogether the height of trees
syncopates to a nauseating stillness. In the awning
hours, leaves punctuate the ground – the cicada
with its machinistic song prowls, spills like
water from a broken vase toppled by me
years younger, raw, agile, deftly windless,
wounded in love, lovingly wounded,
perhaps if there is a word for it, then let me
have my way, easily fraught with its meaning:
a casualty. Sometimes the timeworn folks
would light cigarettes underneath the canopy
of a mango tree to banish ants and send them back
to their queens – roosters in their wrinkled stations
croon in stasis, a song for the somnolent. I become
what the seasons evict. Constancy. Rearing weight
and gravity from nocturne. Tears are communal.
They make us aware of the weight of the Earth.
Somewhere, a funebre stilts through the silence,
and the jangle of little pieces spells out fortuity,
men in huddles mending pain by the sleight of hand,
a toss of a card, spinning in its imaginary axis: fate,
feigned and fine-tuned to belief that it is controllable,
a variable, or a tabulation marred by frailty. From where
I am from, people stride through the streets naked,
soldering baskets filled with fruits gossamer from the
harvest, children suckling their mothers, the music of sweeping
metastasizes throughout the afternoon, and the same clouds
contort themselves to afford wry proposition: it is a day tender
with wonder, its allure overwrought, its sheen unremarkable.
The funebre leaves with a necessary abundance of absence.
All the leaves depart from their mothering boughs,
collapsing on the dreary back of the loam like penitence.
Like how once when you were young, you tinkered with
the fresh scab of your wound and felt the pain confine
itself there, a part of you, that has now healed, but is still
available for the world to break once again.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 4:47 PM UTC
Walked out the door,
into the God abandoned day,
night took his toll,
brought his longtime friend,
the rain.
Please, don't follow me.
I'm not mad for the reasons you thought.
I'm not sad for the season I lost.
It's the lessons you didn't mean, but taught.
Please, don't follow me.
Your words are meaning less and less to me.
Walked past my car,
stopped at Vista,
bought a pack,
watched the water war,
spat smoke, in my soaked coat, under an awning,
a teenage couple, tense as matchsticks, walked past,
staring with unknown, undeserved prejudice.
Please, don't follow me.
It isn't about emotional depths or rediscovery.
It isn't about finding happiness or inspiring sorrow.
It's the fact that my mistakes led me to you.
Please, don't follow me.
You aren't ready to help me.
Oct 10, 2010
Oct 10, 2010 at 9:10 PM UTC
Lay still beneath the swaying leaves
The gentle green and awning eves
Late evening sun to slip away
From purple gold to silver grey
Stay with me here as twilight falls
And shadows grow along the walls
Ivy covered and of ancient stone
Long centuries has this garden grown
It will be here still when we awake
When sleep has left and dawn does break
Feb 27, 2021
Feb 27, 2021 at 11:28 AM UTC
You've become the vine
that creeps
up
the side
of my brick encased dwelling,
breaching every
crack
and
imperfection
you've stumbled across,
managed to conceal them,
and make them presentable.
You've overtaken an entire wall;
teal
and lavender
petals,
like crayon shavings,
scattered
against their dark background,
bringing with them
the color
my house
so desperately needed.
Now,
when friends and onlookers
pass by,
they see this great green and brick
marvel,
covered in leaves,
and petals,
and vines
that stretch from every awning,
down to the cement blocks
of the basement.
We have all the neighbors
whispering about
how your greens
compliment my reds
and how bright your flowers
bloom,
even on the grayest
of mornings,
so that everyone
is in envy
of what they see.
Dec 20, 2013
Dec 20, 2013 at 9:43 AM UTC
I was sitting on the steps of the wrong building —
two blocks over from The Vermont
awash in gold and the noble lights of the Avenue.
I was drunk,
or, there-abouts.
Isobel was coming.
I was sitting on the steps of the wrong building,
pulling the collar of my Burberry coat against my jaw and ears;
it was November and the concierge came out to ask me
if I’d like to come inside and wait —
“No, I’m good, Sir.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
What was two blocks?
I pull out my cellphone —
“Where are you?”
“My mom’s drunk.”
Code for: “I’m playing therapist.”
I’m almost out —
out of brain cells (really?”
out of patience
out of love
out of “it”
out of time — but,
the curious thing is,
I’m never almost out of money.
I notice him when he stops on the step
I sit on.
He’s a sterling silver chain,
the thin, delicate kind that breaks with a soft tug.
He looks down at me, eyes
the colour of darkened ice,
not softened by the yellow lights
raining down from under the awning.
“Do you live here?”
“Where is “here”?”
He laughs. Smiles. “The Florence.”
He’s beautiful,
the way a poppy is beautiful,
transparent,
saying so much with his flushed cheeks
and dark eyes,
so full of life and resembling something or, someone, dead —
“Lest we forget,” whispered the corpse,
ouvert,
in the slush of Alsace-Lorraine.
He sits beside me, shoulder warm,
firm — he’s a guy, but he’s so ******* beautiful —
I want to touch him,
brush his cheek as if he’s a rose protruding
from the briar, the thorny path —
not pick him, because he’s too beautiful,
too tragic, and I don’t want to **** him; —
“Where do you live?”
He’s smoking like a flower.
I want to lie. I don’t.
“The Vermont.”
His expression doesn’t change,
remains soft, his eyes stay ice.
He looks away.
I’ll uproot him and plant him in richer soil,
I won’t be looking into ice,
no more mirror,
but, the sky after rain,
the soft fragrant grey,
so much light.
“What’s that? Two blocks?”
“Yeah.”
He rubs his face.
He has sensitive skin,
red upon contact with the cuff
of his wool coat.
“I’ll walk you.”
“Please.”
I stand up slowly and breathe in cold air
and vapour.
Out comes alcohol.
“You’re drunk?”
“I was.”
“Your laces are undone.”
“Are they?”
I look down at him,
he’s laughing,
lowering his head at my knees
and I feel something despite myself —
warmth in my chest,
accompanied by a warmth in my abdomen,
tensing.
“I’ll fix them.”
I watch him, shoulders moving under his coat,
and I imagine him higher,
on his knees and,
a little higher,
stop myself with:
“I’m not a child.”
He stops — I stop him.
He looks up;
his lashes are like glass.
“I want to kiss you.”
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 5:08 PM UTC
It is hard to write in pictures, when you appear in sounds
How the damask light seeps through awning head space
When halcyon winter days end in minutes,
and you disappear everyday, without fail
Is it cruel that death and love are so mutually aligned
or is it bitter contempt of love that makes it appear so
Could you love me in death as I loved you in life
and is it on that pretense that your only answer is no?
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
I remember morning
Peeping through the curtains' awning
As I just lay there
With my gal just begging for it bare.
Every Texan city
Where I've dropped my pants
Ain't so ******* pretty
Without love and romance.
I'll ne'er forget Amarillo
Every night I'd grease her *****
I dream dreams of Amarillo
And the girl who ****** me there.
Is this the way to Amarillo?
Where I kissed an armadillo
Crying over her huge *****
And sweet Edna's ***** hair.
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
And the girl who ****** me there.
There's a church bell ringing
Welcoming the KY-gel I'm bringing
Though I may be poor
I'm the guy who's coming to do her.
Just beyond the highway
There's an open door
And I can't stop running
To **** that little *****
I can't forget Amarillo
And Edna's mighty *****
I dream dreams of Amarillo
And the girl who ****** me there.
Which is the way to Amarillo?
I've been weeping on my pillow
Clutching to her huge great *****
And sweet Edna's public hair.
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
And sweet Edna's ***** hair
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Lovely Edna's ***** hair
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 10:16 AM UTC
A silhouette leaned back
Grey smoke distorted features demure;
Swirls riddled—smooth jazz syncopation
Her rouge lips cut through
The darkness.
She took a long drag on her
Cigarette, smoke rings evaporated
A halo around her.
Midnight blue eyes surveyed
The Bijou Café
Carpet pooled on the floor,
Blood soaked with wine,
Enclosed by onyx sheets,
The far wall a mirror.
A reflection of the souled and soulless.
Bar welcome strangers, friends,
The lonely.
Sharing drinks and memories
Vines intertwined customers
A perchance meeting;
Rendezvous of sorts.
Nameless faces and acquaintances
Dotted the room, a familiar skyline.
Lonely tower missing.
Smooth black fedora
Hearts sank ships as
Waves of embarrassment
Enveloped her; disappointment.
Crestfallen her eyes downtrodden
Soared with a door creak.
Black fedora entered,
Smooth—slick as oil
Eyes were hidden beneath
A veil of night;
Silence became him.
Hush fell on the crowd
As the shadow took the stage
Light pierced through,
Illuminating him.
Orbs locked
Reservation started to pass,
Voice velvet smooth
Played every heartstring
Notes of excitement
Tantalized her veins,
Pulse quickened;
Echoing every tempo change.
Music coursed through her being
Sensual; seductive
Notes caressed curves, valleys
Spaces in between.
Emotion—chord dependent
Voice penetrated skin
Music flowed through her.
A mountain peek high
Mind clouded—
Breath escaped her lungs.
Quiet murmur answered her comedown
An empty stage; stalwart eyes
Fingers replaced music
Lips brushed hers; taste—electric
Smile turned smirk; hollow presence
Musky cologne in wake.
Magnetic pull forward
Fedora exited
Midnight eyes transformed to dawn;
Abandoned beneath the awning
Familiar skyline flowed liquid.
Bijou Café
Neon sign loomed dark
Save for a letter
I illuminated.
Heart tendrils retreated,
Back to roots; betrayed
Tears turned to water
Liquid guilt—love died.
Fingers loosed
Memory;
Small matchbook of shame
Lingering of once upon a time
In the gutter; pouring rain.
Feb 19, 2010
Feb 19, 2010 at 7:56 PM UTC
a hug that smelled like last summer.
'you didn't have to drive all this way for me'
it took me two hours
on the backroads because the freeway is scary
lost in neighborhoods where everything looked the same,
rows of shiny white teeth. it never crossed my mind to miss it.
how do his eyes burn impossibly blue,
even under the awning?
'the thing is, i had to'
he understood,
he understood just then that i was the girl he loved second best
and a sore loser always eyes the trophy cravingly
before walking away small.
'i'll miss you'
whose to say? i'll take silver & wonder if he ever wrote to
the other redhead.
Feb 16, 2011
Feb 16, 2011 at 11:37 AM UTC
Now:
The EMTs respond.
A Jane Doe is found dead.
Beneath the I-90 overpass.
They lift her
Zip her into a bag,
And transport her to the morgue.
They can’t feel sad.
Today:
The few wispy strands of hair that remain
Dangle haphazardly from her scabby head
Jagged misshapen teeth protrude from dry cracked lips
betraying breath that stinks of infection and decomposition
Vermin gnaw on exposed flesh while parasites feast within.
Her eyes dim as her body putrifies.
Last Week:
Mission workers prop her up against the wobbly chain link fence
A thin blanket is wrapped around her bony shoulders and
Her blue-tarp awning is adjusted
She would be less wet and cold.
For a night.
They leave a cheese sandwich and chicken noodle soup.
The rats eat most of it.
She wouldn’t have kept it down anyway.
Last Month:
The shelter is scary and dangerous.
She couldn’t sleep without nightmares and her screaming disrupted other ‘guests’.
The shelter workers apologize and put her out at 2:19 AM.
She finds a spot between two dumpsters.
It reeks of **** but is unoccupied.
Sometime in the dark she is ***** and beaten by two crackheads.
The crime is unreported.
Last Year:
The fluorescent lights sting her eyes.
The antiseptic smell burns her nose.
The noise and chaos that surround her make her dizzy and disoriented.
She fights hard to get away but is restrained by strong hands – then leather straps.
A painful jab in her arm and then nothing.
Days or weeks later she emerges in a haze.
Kindly eyes greet her.
They stay with her.
They accompany her to the shelter.
They tell her to come back for follow-on care.
She never sees them again.
Before:
The divorce rips her heart in two.
She has nothing.
She is nothing.
Her world crumbles beneath her and she crumbles with it.
Where would she go?
What would she do?
Everything has become so wrong.
Once Upon a Time:
She was happy. Joyful.
Filled with life and hope.
He was smart, funny, successful.
Together they were magical.
Perfect.
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 3:21 PM UTC
I remember the old back road I used to drive--
the one that connected my house to yours
with the abrupt boom of green mountainside, fog
clinging in patches above the evergreen
awning, and the old pine reaching far higher
than the rest--a monument to the trees
growing steady in your eyes. I haven’t
forgotten how your irises, only saplings,
drowned in the flood of ‘06 as the Delaware
crawled over the bank and into your head.
I never knew what to make of your
ripple-warped, water-stained fears crashing
rampant as the broken **** that swallowed
Church Street. They reminded me of tangled thorns,
my fingers scarred from moonlit attempts to smooth
needle-edged guilt as you repeated to me:
I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault, I should have known.
You told me how you knew I would, too, wash away--
that’s just what people did after floods.
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 12:13 AM UTC
We were so ecstatic waiting for the wind
to wind its way through the trees--
there was an electricity in the air,
a charged warning.
We sat on the porch guarded by
oversized hoodies
and a wooden awning--
smoked bowls and snickered
at the squirrels dashing
lightning speed from unsteady
branches into hidden havens.
For hours we waited and watched
lawn chairs, trashcans, and
fields of leaves swirl up into the sky,
finally earning a retreat
into chaos. The newly
boarded windows withstood
the huffing and puffing of
nature’s big bad wolf-
he was not so ravenous this time.
Not like Katrina or Andrew.
Not enough to warrant
a week of cancelled classes
and hours of uninterrupted
news coverage- how quickly we
overreact to even the slightest
threat of rain or snow.
This was nothing more
than a PG rated epic but parents
sheltered their children,
covered their eyes and ears,
rocked them to sleep as even
picnic tables stood their ground.
Jul 13, 2010
Jul 13, 2010 at 9:37 AM UTC
I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl.
Center of the universe,
I had the back of my parents’ car
all to myself.
I could look out one window
then slide over to the other window
without any quibbling over territorial rights,
and whenever I played a game
on the floor of my bedroom, it was always my turn.
Not until my parents entered their 90s
did I long for a sister, a nurse I named Mary,
who worked in a hospital
five minutes away from their house
and who would drop everything,
even a thermometer, whenever I called.
“Be there in a jiff” and “On my way!”
were two of her favorite expressions, and mine.
And now that the parents are dead,
I wish I could meet Mary for coffee
every now and then at that Italian place
with the blue awning where we would sit
and reminisce, even on rainy days.
I would gaze into her green eyes
and see my parents, my mother looking out
of Mary’s right eye and my father staring out of her left,
which would remind me of what an odd duck
I was as a child, a little prince and a loner,
who would break off from his gang of friends
on a Saturday and find a hedge to hide behind.
And I would tell Mary about all that, too,
and never embarrass her by asking about
her nonexistence, and maybe we
would have another espresso and a pastry
and I would always pay the bill and walk her home.
May 18, 2019
May 18, 2019 at 4:38 PM UTC