"blazer" poems
I was never looking into you
I was only pouring an image of myself onto your canvas
Of course I didn’t know
it was me looking into me
this was the mirage of my desire
always in the shape of a question mark
and you
a sweeping mystery
oozing something toeing the peculiar line between *** and titanium (cold, edgy, sharp - trembling
between pain and principle
like blazer and tie
or more like halfway-unbuttoned-shirt-and-slacks on-with-no-tie
(it was like you were making an effort!))
It was ***
but it also wasn’t ***
(I am empty
I am full)
I keep building up and up and up
all these images in my Mind
(which never shuts up)
(a never-ending narrative
She spins and spins and succumbs
only in those rare and passing circumstances)
constructing people like buildings
only the scaffolding is imaginary and when
the architecture folds in on itself
soulless
and my beloved figurines come toppling down on me
why do I still get so surprised
so stung
so lonely in that
hollow and distant way
(like your Mind is echoing
in on
Itself)?
My Mind is like quicksand
devouring streams of memory with ease
forever unsatisfied and craving more of the same
sharp edges and all
praying for a satiation in some distant future
She knows will never come
Only here
in this tiny universe
can I spell out anything resembling rationality
from the mess and junk and tangled tendrils of my Mind
Only here
can I extract bits and pieces of thoughts
and try to puzzle them together
until they make sense
until I can separate “Me” from “Reality"
And what doesn’t make sense
what I need to understand
is why I feel so beset
with this heavy magnetism that
overpowers me to the point of
paralysis
(with little to no room for breathing)
and why it was you
who pushed me into this feeling
and you
who is still pulling me along
far past the threshold of my resistance
and I am done
and it stings
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 12:51 PM UTC
It’s early Friday afternoon and,
over plates of greasy spoon dinner,
the musician and the businessman
repeat their weekly ritual.
The businessman has his problems at home
and spills his guts to his musician friend.
“It’s been a real long time coming,
but she’s still been such a bitter *****
They’ve met this way since
their college days and nights
spent studying the bottoms
of whiskey bottles. And, as usual,
the businessman’s hair sits sprawled
on his head like a rag, and his tie
is loosened. The musician doesn’t understand
divorce: “You look like hell.
You know, if you need a place to stay,
Helen and I and the boy
can always make some room for you.”
They light a pair of cigarettes and wait
for a waitress to kick them out.
Into the haze of a Lower East Side crowd
the musician and his band play
his newest pieces, riffs on the happy swagger
of the Duke. His critics—
and he has many—
write that his jazz sings
the inescapable *********** of suffering
through the life of every oblivious body,
which makes the musician’s music
sound more like the blues
than jazz. But it’s jazz all the same
and perhaps it was the intensity
of the growling bass that shot
spirits down the throats in the audience,
reeling drunk in time to the beat
of the musical suffering.
The weekdays die and it is Friday again.
He has a big view of midtown,
the businessman, and though the window the falling
sun horizons over his socked toes,
parked on his desk in triumph over
all those stockholders. It’s a pain
to lose your family,
but the businessman puts on
a good face, and drinks.
This Friday, the musician and the businessman
are not in the mood for talking.
But a scotch thrown down,
and the two are tighter than
thieves.
The businessman complains of life at home
and the musician’s eyes cross.
That night, the musician skips his performance.
His wife cries in their bed,
shuddering with worry and asking him
what makes him so distant? she asks—
it’s a mystery even to himself.
He is sweating whiskey—
which suits him fine—
and he spends his night on the bridge.
One week later and it is Friday, finally.
Today, the businessman will see
his children at his former home
for the last time for a handful of months
at best. The musician has not been home
for three days. He stays at a friend’s apartment,
puts on his ***** blazer
and a record of the Duke’s
before he throws himself down the airshaft.
The businessman jumps on the 5:44
out of town and calls his friend the musician
to cancel their usual Friday meeting,
but his phone keeps ringing,
ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing.
Apr 12, 2010
Apr 12, 2010 at 10:01 PM UTC
I had to run to the store today at lunchtime
we were out of paper plates
we had a party last night
and didn't want to have to do dishes again
While there and while moving quite quickly
although in the shape I am in, "quickly" is being very kind to myself
I came across a man
In a blue blazer
with yellow shorts and
knee-high yellow socks
in beige shoes
My first thought was
I need to get paper plates
my father-in-law is waiting for his lunch
he's eighty nine and flew over the Pacific
during WWII in a PBY Catalina
one of the most beautiful flying boats ever created
pulling pilots out of the water
who had come up short in a dogfight
or of fuel
I needed to get paper plates
This isn't Bermuda old chap
or a cricket match in Rhoorkee
the british invented great campaign chairs there
this is Connecticut but then
I realized that I knew the man
I had worked with him in a previous life
in a long dead company
that burst before the internet bubble did
He was a former British Sergeant Major
and as such took his colonial British very seriously
that attitude fascinates me
his office I recalled, looked like a colonial governor's office in India
So I said hi
and we talked for a bit
and wished each other well
and said good bye
as I needed to get paper plates
my father-in-law was waiting for his lunch
Jun 23, 2013
Jun 23, 2013 at 8:02 PM UTC
She was unmistakably clever,
People strolling past her on the street
would ponder to themselves briefly,
She must be a professor or a lawyer.
But it wasn't her round glasses,
Or her fitted blazer that convinced them.
It was her yellow shoes,
and the way they seemed to float
above the stained pavement.
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 1:58 PM UTC
Bedroom’s painted fisherman’s blue
There’s a cut out of Hayden Panettiere naked in a pink bikini with a hula-hoop on the back of the door
Copies of British Vogue desperately hidden underneath the bed accompanying an empty bottle of Glen’s
Manchester United duvet cover and matching pillows to boot
The bin’s filled with pre-packed home-made lunches from the last six months
Wardrobes a collection of ill fitting blue jeans bought for me by grandmother and football jerseys for teams that I’ve never even heard of, yet let alone see play a single game
Uniform ironed and sitting out ready for school on Monday at 8am sharp
***** clothes cover mostly all the floor smelling of Lynx’s finest even though there’s an empty laundry basket just waiting in the corner to be used
Inside one of the woolen blazer’s (that is way too big for me) pockets a single unopened ****** and an AES 256-bit encrypted USB stick
An old PlayStation 2, with a single controller; games including FIFA years through 2004 to now, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and GTA.
Blood red shoplifted lipstick that’s now melted hidden in the little secret compartment at the back, meant for network expansion.
Artemis Fowl, Alex Rider, and Harry Potter all adorn the bookcase
Physics, Maths, and IT textbooks remain firmly closed on the desk in addition to a smashed phone from me and Daddy’s last “physical altercation”
Lady Gaga’s “I Like it Rough” is playing in the background on repeat…
Aug 23, 2020
Aug 23, 2020 at 2:43 PM UTC
"Do you like me?"
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What's a question like that?
What's a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?
3k
Remember how I'd smoke after school
outside your classroom window
watching you pack up your briefcase,
pulling your arms through your blazer sleeves?
Four cigarettes in a ring
between my thumb and fingertips,
an "okay" sign.
You preferred jean dresses with the hips cut out,
knee-high fishnet socks,
my hair wrapped curiously in bandana red
with my eyes outlined in black.
I stole condoms and Twinkies,
brought them to your apartment
after you'd call to unwrap me
like penny candy
on the mattress in the middle of your floor,
each tear in synch with the teeth
of your zipper releasing.
A green wrapper
and an empty trash can
next to my book bag.
You licked your fingers
after the last bite.
Mar 8, 2014
Mar 8, 2014 at 9:58 PM UTC
have you ever held the sun in your hands
sometimes i carry it around in my pockets and forget it’s there
sometimes i feel so full of it that i believe in god again
what else is there besides
the streams of light peeking through magnolia leaves
who am i to the baseball shirt
to the blazer or the black fishnets or the crooked bottom teeth
it doesn’t matter
i smell lemon verbena laundry detergent and it’s like time travel
i’m in our west hollywood apartment again falling asleep on my right hip
sometimes i am forty-two but i am always fourteen
do you see me on the page or in the sidewalk cracks
i wish i didn’t care but i always do
where does it come from
the longing
the need to be loved by the things that we love
i hear a song or read a poem and i’m on my knees
i hate being looked at but
i’d do anything for you to see me
Mar 27, 2021
Mar 27, 2021 at 8:44 AM UTC
Third Date
She talked and talked and talked,
an East Coast, cultured accent;
"So what are you anyway,
half-German? *** really?
But you look so......British, I guess..."
He stroked her knee.
She gesticulated loudly,
and talked.
"So you were at Princeton,
WOW, that's impressive."
He squeezed her knee.
"I baked cupcakes on Friday night,
my Mom's recipe.
I don't even eat cupcakes,
what's that all about?!?!
He squeezed her other knee.
She wore a mid-thigh,
black and white dress,
swirls, that sort of thing,
interesting cleavage.
He was back on the first knee.
She looked Italian
(it was 'Ristorante Acqua al Duo' after all),
Amy Winehouse eye flares,
head swaying,
resting on her palms,
swaying again.
He had his back to me.
She fingered the wine glass,
tall and generous,
devoured
the last inch,
came up for air and talked again.
He wore a blazer
and cavalry twill pants,
loafers and no socks.
She was hot,
really hot,
fanned her brow with the dessert menu
"Tiramisu was so deeeelicious".
75 degrees on the Prudential window.
He perspired,
fidgeted,
loosened his collar,
looked for the waitress.
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 6:45 PM UTC
I can do this too, when I'm not au naturel
And trying to beat all of your @sses with how well
I make the gentleman, how excellently I am the imp,
How swell I step, dancing, aside, how terribly I simp -
Sometimes catch me getting back and giving the barman a chance -
I heeded their call; I washed off the day, and stepped into a trance
Of raspberry, rose and sandalwood; I donned my blue and pink silk,
And my black boots, tights and blazer - She's got style; And in that ilk
I also painted my face, with blues, whites, pinks, blacks, golds
And it was late when I stepped out, and in the very holds
Of the night that a lady like I should find terrifying, but I walked
The quarter of an hour to the Silk Mill; talked
For something more like four or five,
Face sharp, hair artfully mad, alive
In every sense, aided by the fine cocktails in this student setting
I could enchant all in four languages, and I did, forgetting
For a bit that another one of my faces I believe to be repugnant:
Because it begs for attention; and my current, commanded it
Because I came expecting nothing, and asking nothing,
And I quite frankly didn't give a d@mn about much of anything,
But if I wasn't very much a part of the room, and very much she
Whom every boy needed to speak to, and would ideally keep the company
Of, if that wasn't I
Then every lie's a truth, and every truth, a lie.
Mar 20, 2022
Mar 20, 2022 at 11:15 AM UTC
Yes
God be thanked
And even the prophet
would do for the countless blessings
Children
God be thanked
For each breath we take
children
Perhaps you have forgotten
Gratitude is the cost
That we spend on buying the things
It is alms when poeckets are empty
It is bread when belly needs something
It is lamp when we have darkness
It is guidance when doubts loom on us
It is the right path when wrong turn we take
It is water when lips are parched
It is blazer when chill strike us
It is shade when we stand under the scorching sun
Children
Gratitude is part of prayer
And prayer recieves His mercy
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 7:12 AM UTC
Did you notice the painted trillium—
The way it freckled the dark sky
Or the hills below the Sassafras summit?
Scarcely scattered beneath the pines,
The blossoms live and die like love,
Or maybe not.
Perhaps the petals live like I’ve imagined after they die,
Boutonnieres pinned to the night’s blue blazer.
But even if they don’t, I envy the way they live
Their lives without wondering whether
Or not they might dream.
Our clothes fed the sweet pinesap,
Rotting with our minds on the forest floor
That night beneath the Lenten moon,
And the cold draped our bodies
In a film of sweat as thick as the sound
Of the falls flooding the valley.
Winter’s fear saturated our bivy’s fly
As Spring drew near, but still we slept.
Your pupils danced behind my eyelids
And God shook his head in disgust
While we sipped silver steins replenished from Lethe,
But only angels died that night in Elysium.
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 11:02 PM UTC
I saw a dancer, seductive
Trail-blazer, paint a picture
Of the future; in the future
There were silvered swans
Gliding the surfaces of mirrors,
Dragons spewing sunset
Into the sky. Later, the moon -
Distant dream-fellow, will rise
Above a plane of promises.
But the dancer tripped and fell,
I was reminded the stars are cruel
To reach with lesser fuel
Than is needed, imagined
Only in a dreamer's desperation
To depart an insensible nation.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 5:15 AM UTC
Sartorial elegance
He always wore a yellow silk scarf around his neck
The type actors wear when in blazer having a drink on the terrace
Of a posh hotel, he bought his scarf at a second-hand store
In Cheshire, nevertheless, it was made to fit him
Oddly enough the rest of his apparel was purchased in a Chine's
This gave him an air of seedy elegance that normally comes with
Those who suffer no self- awareness
He was poor and lived on bread and marge, when not invited
To high-born party by people who thought he was an aristocrat
Sometimes I came too because as he said he was writing a novel,
And that made me interested in people with literary ambitions,
There are so few of them hidden in lofts and not spoken of-
His dead was sudden a rope and a beam,
he was missed by the locals
I have not had a proper dinner for a long time,
But I wear his yellows silk scarf for a book unwritten.
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 2:31 AM UTC
I saw the news in obituary black and
alabaster-chamber white. Women mulled about
in shining dresses, all pinwheel-galaxy black.
The men’s suits: darkness-between-
stalks-late-in-the-cornfield black
The pastor wore a Cosmopolitan’s-table-of-contents
white stock in the non-air-conditioned
church. His sermon dripped on the bereaved
like hardening wax. A portly woman wheezed
in the second row. A first-roadkill-of-summer
red paper fan swayed idly in her left hand.
The coffin creaked, 4am-grandpa‘s-coffee brown
the procession moved outside slowly. The moment
was like when two trains are idle and one begins
to drift forward. From inside the other,
it feels as if we are drifting backward.
Backward to days before with the namer in his study.
He has on his 1862-edition-Les-Misérables tan
blazer. His wrists crawl out the undersized sleeves.
Above his roof, the sky milks over
to 4th- grader’s-scratched-locker blue.
A wine glass full of just-waking-up-seeing-steam-
waft-from-under- the-bathroom-door white wine
rests on his particle board desk. I want a 70s B movie villain
to bust through the door yelling, "I’m not sorry" and shoot him
with a chipping-paint-bike-rack-next-to-the-library¬ grey revolver.
I want the namer to be speechless, knock over the wine glass
and die with grandma’s-new-couch red pooling on his blazer.
The truth is my grandma’s new couch is this ugly
brown-yellow color. I don’t really know how to describe it.
Dec 27, 2010
Dec 27, 2010 at 5:09 PM UTC
On Monday I will wear my uniform -
A blazer from Goodwill, old khaki slacks -
Knot my made-in-China patriotic tie
And verify that my papers are in order
On Monday I will sortie through the candidates -
I’m important to them on this one day -
Then work around their signs all slogan-trapped
And rush the doors through a hail of cliches’
And watched by comrades with their helmets blue
Vote for a Merovingian or two
Oct 21, 2018
Oct 21, 2018 at 8:51 AM UTC
I thought it would be more romantic than this.
I thought it would strangle me with its strangeness
Walk up to me with a sword in its oriental mouth
And bump into me,
Jolting me out of my occidental seat into the stinking dust of the gutters.
I thought the Mohammed Ali mosque would wrestle me to the ground with its shocking bare immenseness.
I thought my nostrils would burn with the assault of unnamed spice.
I thought my ears would crumble with the muezzins call at noon,
When all the dogs in Cairo enter a canine Koran reading contest.
I thought the pyramids would crush me with too much history and indifference
I thought the city of the dead would turn my gut over in its emptiness and blank windows
I thought the Nile would bewitch me and turn my blue blazer to Joseph’s coat
I thought Tuten Kamens chariot would run over me
I thought so much and I thought so much
That it brought me here where I would not be except for Cairo
For Cairo was a poetic enema
And purged some foolishness from me.
She lightened my load
And with her sister Bombay
Will always be on my cerebral medicine shelf
To take in case of cabin fever.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 12:55 AM UTC
I sat hard-pressed against
the plastic seat on the Metro,
green line to Branch Ave,
feeling the heat
of all the dozens of bodies that surrounded me,
5:30 PM and everyone
making headway for home after a
long, hot work day.
The swampy humidity
clung to my arms like sticky tack.
I wiped my brow with the sleeve of my
blazer
and listened to some 90s
R & B on my iPod as I
c
o
u
n
t
e
d
d
o
w
n
the exits till I could
free myself from
the suffocating crowd.
It was no day that was even remotely extraordinary,
no life-changing series of events,
no incredible people I had met;
nope, just commuting back to the SE quadrant of
town as I had
every day that summer.
I looked up and took
a snapshot with my mind;
I remember exactly
how that sliver of time
felt to me,
how it looked,
smelledsoundedtasted
as I realized my days in D.C. had begun to feel
like the norm,
that I had grown accustomed to the
claustrophobic train cabins,
the repetitive street names,
and
10% sales tax.
So suddenly there was this
catastrophic
timeturning
momentous magnanimous monumental magic
of the most mundanely minuscule moment,
as ordinary crawled up my veins
and absorbed me in it.
Somehow
squeezed.in.between
the rush-hour,
the annoyance, impatience, and near-suffocation
felt like
home.
Dec 26, 2014
Dec 26, 2014 at 1:10 AM UTC
After your lecture on
polyphase something-or-the-others
we meet at my house which is also
your house. We were going to make dinner
but
you're wearing those square black glasses and
a tight lacy blouse and
that **** pencil skirt that hugs your ***
and those black stilettos and
I can't help myself. I lean
across the stove and twirl
it off, condemning the pasta to half-cookedness
and then I
grab you around the waist
pull you flush against me
and kiss you breathless
one hand on the small of your back
the other
on your *** kneading and squeezing
eliciting gasps from your parted lips that
end up between my teeth.
your trembling hands frantically
unbuttoning my shirt as I unzip your
skirt and throw it to the corner your
blazer and castaway your
blouse and then you're in your
bra and dampened ******* fingernails
scratching and raking and clawing at
the small of my back with your
legs spread in an inverted triangle and your
tongue in my mouth. I unsnap your
bra and moments later your
******* are under lipsteethtongue and then
lipsteethtongue
kisssuckbite
lower
and
lower
until
lipsteethtongue
kisssuckbite at
your ******** and your
***** until
gasping squealing moaning
you ****** your
juice in my
mouth and on my
lipstongueteeth.
The pasta is wasted.
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 2:53 PM UTC
I sat with him
gazed in his warm brown eyes
as he told me of
misunderstood philosophy
and anarcho-capitalism
and being an
agnostic vegan
out of boredom with his own
complacency.
And he pulled his pocket watch
out of his blazer
to check the time
but I could have told him
it would read half past
the debonair gentleman
and the social radical -
so, almost to the overpriveleged apathy
of our lives.
But I kept quiet.
I always did like a rebel.
May 26, 2010
May 26, 2010 at 8:58 PM UTC
I said I can do it
I was on a four month roll
I had it all
Then I joined the old group
And they had what I was deprived of
I thought I liked being away from it
But once I smelt it
I was back to it
Wanting it
Loving it
Inhale, exhale
Uphill, next hill
Pocket dragon me, blazer.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 4:57 AM UTC
SUCH A SUNNY DAY
the objects
in his pocket
have lost
their identity
their significance
to anyone but him
a hairy comb
photo of an unknown
woman
who can she be
a torn-in-two
train ticket
chewing gum
much masticated
yet put back
in his blazer's breast pocket
small change
a penny and a sixpence and
a button
from the cuff
no clue as to who
he had been
before the water claimed him
as its own
the disgust and fascination
of those
passersby who continue
to pass by
it such
a sunny day
for death to
intrude this way
the miscellany of objects
ownerless now
the waters of the Liffey
calm and unmoved
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 16, 2018 at 4:12 PM UTC
Fantasy:
Ariel gave up her voice for human legs,
Cinderella risked her life to go to the ball.
Moana left her family to save her island,
Merida defied the rules to be truly happy.
Real life:
Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space,
Virginia Hall was the first female spy.
Emilie Chatelet was the first female philosopher.
Hypatia was the female mathematician.
Jan 31, 2020
Jan 31, 2020 at 5:50 PM UTC