"capri" poems
lips become cherry red when I cry
and chasing cars hurts from my ears
down to my toes
because it was never wasting time
I almost killed my jeep battery
(forgot to turn the lights off)
drinking coffee to Iowa cornfields and a resurrected yearning
maybe I'll leave (I want to)
--LA, Paris, Austria, Versailles, Rio, Carmel, Amsterdam, Mumbai--
I'm audacious and arrogant--much too proud of
my flaws
leaving would be easy: intoxicating
like caffeine
stars
fear
laughing kisses
but staying means home and English and standing out like a sore thumb (a beautiful one) in public
and the people I deeply love
(and need) I can admit that now
so I'll watch the Capri Sun orange sunset
once again tonight
and try to intoxicate myself with
cornfields, sassy 8th graders, my beautiful examples of true love, ADD, bashful boy,
and pieces of the world
on my body
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 1:36 PM UTC
On the southwest side of Capri
we found a little unknown grotto
where no people were and we
entered it completely
and let our bodies lose all
their loneliness.
All the fish in us
had escaped for a minute.
The real fish did not mind.
We did not disturb their personal life.
We calmly trailed over them
and under them, shedding
air bubbles, little white
balloons that drifted up
into the sun by the boat
where the Italian boatman slept
with his hat over his face.
Water so clear you could
read a book through it.
Water so buoyant you could
float on your elbow.
I lay on it as on a divan.
I lay on it just like
Matisse's Red Odalisque.
Water was my strange flower,
one must picture a woman
without a toga or a scarf
on a couch as deep as a tomb.
The walls of that grotto
were everycolor blue and
you said, "Look! Your eyes
are seacolor. Look! Your eyes
are skycolor." And my eyes
shut down as if they were
suddenly ashamed.
4.3k
My socks are a conversation starter,
They have more to say than me.
I request a Kid Cudi song
To the kid with his laptop open to YouTube,
Pretending to be a DJ.
Someone takes a long pull on the hookah.
I discuss True Blood in the backseat of a car with a girl from Hungry.
I drink a Capri Sun.
Eat some Ritz.
My mind is sober and waiting for my body to catch up.
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
21 years or older but I asked to use the bathroom first.
Then I slip in when the bouncer isn't looking.
Naked bodies hanging on poles.
Men, smoke, 90's rap music.
On the stage, they bend backwards like dogs.
Dogs staring back, mirroring the position
and her self - esteem.
A woman approaches two men at the table in front of me.
Her fishnet wrap shows she's naked.
******* grinding, tossing hair.
Some slimy guys buy us drinks from a table a distance away.
Dorena gulps next to me.
I leave mine alone.
Absorbed into this vision because I have to immerse
myself in this because I must write.
I need to tell people that her hand slapped her ******
like it did something wrong.
She made her hand do that because that man
was giving her dollars as I watched them slide off her back,
her legs; the sides of them.
She gave his friend a dance and a magic trick.
Setting fire to matchsticks she placed on her ******* and her ****
He blew the flame away.
The dollars blew to the ground
and after her performance she went on her knees,
and picked up the remains.
Her dress, the money, her composure.
Afterward, she lit up a Capri, the type of cigarette
I craved all night.
I bummed one off her and she fled out of sight.
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 11:32 PM UTC
When beauty grows too great to bear
How shall I ease me of its ache,
For beauty more than bitterness
Makes the heart break.
Now while I watch the dreaming sea
With isles like flowers against her breast,
Only one voice in all the world
Could give me rest.
2.3k
Jamming jellyfish
Top-Me
((Giddy App Seahorse))
The horseradish on
my lap______
The jolly Jelly
Gefilte Fish
Little help from my friends
How we click the laptop
One dent to Deceive me
The Rock and Rolling
Stomach his smoke went
Like *** Cheese)
he leaves me
The spicy tongue map
Z-Top Zany Chilli Pepper____
your # tap dance tap
Italian top of
the cheese designer skirt
The outskirts of Naples
Her sweet dimples, please
The Islands of Sicily
So many Cheese forms
Terms of Endearment
Mama Mia Murano-Positano
Her lips of Romano Cheese
(To Top Me) Challenge me
Cheese doesn't mix
with cappuccino,
she's the Capri
Ala Denti
Cheese Wiz chair
Mediterranean Wines
Bear men doing low
sips of time
the grisly(Z) pour
The car smelled like
Flight (Top Me) Swiss air
Meet Dominique
How it went La Cirque
Anti Christ Devil Red-bed
cheese mystique
SOS to their notes
PS the junk car in
Midas the makeover
Make-up artist counter
Clinique
I could paint over your hood
Creamy mind put at ease
He's so displeased
New castle disease
Mingling social disease
She's so infectious
ZZ- Top me rock me
Eyes bloodshot you got me
And nevertheless
With twelve and V
V- Vamps tramps
and 14 karats
The French Lieutenant
Mistress Brie with heavy
bite teeth like garnets
Cher turning back time
The burlesque striptease
Come back little Sheba
Z Top Queen of Sheba
I know it's coming soon____?
All Tight claustrophobic
The tight squeeze
Him speaking
Mandarin Oranges
The British Colony
Unique Chinese languages
Her hills, San Francisco
Jack Nicholson
Comedy of China town
The American Women
Smile cheese at the Disco
The food Cantonese
style
Z muscles Hercules
Joan Rivers
Fashion Police
The Cheese of Portuguese
Its the meat market
With his nifty thrifty Neice
All Socrates
(Gromet and Cheese)
Those Brooklyn
workers
The Falcon Matese____*
More cheese Z-Top
Who could ever top
The string cheese
Silken strings became
to rest, I rest my cheese
What cheese fascinates you
Tell me?
Jun 8, 2018
Jun 8, 2018 at 9:12 AM UTC
I feel like Cruella DeVille,
Smoking a capri
In brand new clothes
Because Christmas
Just happened
Why did, when I opened
All of the gifts from
Family & friends,
Did I long for a person
To step out of a box
And wrap their arms
Around me?
To take them back
To my apartment
So we could sit on
The mattress on the floor
Smoking my little
DeVille cigarettes
And drinking a,
Previously unopened,
Bottle of bourbon
In my now,
Newly gifted
Star Wars mugs
Dec 24, 2012
Dec 24, 2012 at 11:27 PM UTC
When beauty grows too great to bear
How shall I ease me of its ache,
For beauty more than bitterness
Makes the heart break.
Now while I watch the dreaming sea
With isles like flowers against her breast,
Only one voice in all the world
Could give me rest.
1.8k
I am told that my anatomy is the sheer academy of my lack of sensibility and that my sense of autonomy is just my way of rebelling against my own skin.
Because I was born in a body that is just a little too small to contain such an opinion, and so this must be just the remainder of some book I read, right?
I am told that at times my mouth traces outlines larger than my hands can, and all I know is that my fingers stretch to try and reach the cord that turns off the light on my porch so that I can find the streetlight shadow puppet.
Because I am at odds with the lightbulb delivery of my best friend’s idealism and my body’s realism and it’s all a sense of alchemism when I’m searching for altruism.
I’m told that I am too big for my body, or “for such a little girl, you’re very smart,”. I used to start in the plus-size section of stores, only to be escorted to diminutive floral prints and capri pants.
I am still mistaken for a lost child at the airport, I am still advised not to go out in certain areas after dark, I didn’t realize I was small until I wasn’t listened to.
Jul 11, 2014
Jul 11, 2014 at 12:14 AM UTC
Boyfriend number 1
Moody, tall & grumpy
Heard he's got 8 kids
****** glad he dumped me.
Boyfriend 2 & 3
Interchangeable, doing battle
Fighting for my affections
****** tittle tattle.
Boyfriend 4 heartbreaker
Mastering his art
Olympic flirt, lothario
2 timing man **** ****
Boyfriend 5 flash Harry
A ladies man, so he reckoned
Metallic Ford Capri
He was gone in 60 seconds.
Boyfriend 6 & 7, Hammer Horror
How the **** did these begin
Beer goggles and cocktails
UGH! Just let me catch me skin.
Boyfriend 8 from Down Under
Bit angry, bit thick
James dean Lookey likey
Married him too quick.
Boyfriend 9, pious
Quiet nature boy
Once married grumpy ****
Terminated contract, lack of joy.
Boyfriend 10 professional
Public Sector, comprehensible
Politically correct lifestyle
He thought I wasn't sensible.
Boyfriend 11 is The Man
Mild mannered rampant ram
Sizzling hot attraction
He accepts me as I am.
Now the chase is over
Got him, Bingo, I've won
Hellfire he's got 5 kids
******* glad I've been done.
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 1:32 AM UTC
Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,
Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,
Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,
Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be;
Round about the mountain’s crest a flag of smoke is hung—
Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young!
1.6k
Capri
roofless cubes, spidery with wire,
cakes of azure and enzian;
above at the Villa San Michele
Rilke smiles down at the broken beaches,
coves of defiant waves, compacted sea
Pompeii
a chessboard of honest stones
open to a sky of hushed shouts;
we huddle in a ***** frame
of another life, a stopped day
Napoli
warm and secret, olive-eyed
you make a new face
as we gaze from a bus:
an act of moment
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 7:36 AM UTC
I wear men's 9 shoes,
and black socks underneath
Batman boxer briefs during morning shifts
And cotton boxers when I sleep
Boot-cut jeans during the winter
and capri joggers during spring
Long sleeve, and short sleeve button ups
Are pretty much my thing.
My glasses are black, lenses thick.
My hair cut short, just recently dyed.
If I didn't have *******
You'd think I'm a guy.
Aug 22, 2015
Aug 22, 2015 at 3:37 AM UTC
the professor
name's John, I think
every day a goatee
a ponytail
and an honest smile
brings me flowers
sometimes.
pays in nickels
sometimes.
"have an easy day"
he says to me
man in the same brown
suit, mismatching
every day
coffee, hunched over
with something under
his arm
sometimes.
never seen him speak
just a scowl
and a solemn shuffle
the owner
of the bar next door
I think.
out for a cigarette
every 30 minutes or so
or move his car
he gets our mail
sometimes.
glasses on his forehead
never on his face
always a fleeting
noncommittal smile
pacing past the door
sly eyes.
there's the guy
stuck in the 70s.
every day
bell bottoms
a black bowl cut
it's a wig
I think.
a leather jacket
sometimes.
walks like he owns
the sidewalk
he doesn't.
the old man
the half-blind one
orders the same thing
always.
with his walker
his hands searching
haven't seen him
in a while
the big guy from
the burger place
across the street
no, not the famous one
the other place.
took his suggestion
got a burger
wasn't very good
but he's always so
cheery, gotta be nice
the one guy
blue shorts guy
stops by during his
run, to check
the selection. back
an hour later in
pants and
a jacket now.
never buys a thing
wearing those blue shorts
the woman with
oddly spaced teeth
and hair
the short witchy kind
lots of shawls
and oversized tote bags
and cargo-capri's.
complained of
an allergic reaction
once
to god knows what.
keeps coming back though
a mother and son
mother, tired.
ten year old
private school boy
asks for too much
and too many questions
"did you make this?"
"are you really 20?"
"do you go to school?"
he asks so many questions
"yes, yes, no."
"why not?"
"well…"
mom saves me
distracts him away
the poor skinny one
the homeless man.
ill-fitting clothes
always.
women's
sometimes.
begging, cigarettes and money
has a tic, says
"hello! hi! hello!"
every few seconds
he's very persistent.
and very polite.
gracefully insane, I'd say
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 4:20 AM UTC
In a Ford escort you can get on the motorway and let your self free
In a Ford escort you can paint it black or red or even blue like the sea
In a Ford escort travelling to Wales is a whole different country
In a Ford escort my dad drives it like it's a Capri
In a Ford escort it's easy to get parts for you and for me
In a Ford escort you can fit a big stereo and wake up the street
In a Ford escort you can go to Blackpool and drive on the beach
In a Ford escort you can smoke a cigarette because we have a smelly that looks like a tree
In a Ford escort when you've had enough of the mark 2 you can save up and get the mark 3.
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 2:19 AM UTC
A lady bug crawled across my dreams today,
I thought it was odd, being so cold out and all.
Sways in and out of consciousness, oblivion
In and out of this light I’ve been living in.
On the big ball I’m living on, spinning with.
I’m a broken insomniac packed with adrenaline.
Sirens blaring and dead eyes staring in my head,
So loud here trapped beneath everything
A dull thrumming gentle humming,
So loud the soul of my shoe vibrates,
To the bad vibes of thier raw hate.
Simple centering while I meditate.
Tell myself there is a thing to call a happy place.
Pieced to pieces fabricated memories,
Like a puzzle missing pieces.
But I fell asleep today, long before
Four in the morning like a normal human.
Sanity came to the ushered sound of gentle snoring.
And a lady bug crawled across my dreams today,
For some reason it made me think of you.
And the soft sway that’s your way,
I thought you were here but I woke
**** choke the tears **** them
And your gone. you are the best dream,
Best one lately anyway when I miss you like this.
Best I have ever had and a common thief
Of my sleeping dreams
Scaring my eyes open for so long
I finally start to see a common theme
Remember that lady bug that ran across
My memories.
Seeing you would easily sooth me back to sleep
And until then i grin over silly things,
Like your wide eyes when a lady bug crawled
Up your knee.
Capri, I miss you.
Apr 20, 2012
Apr 20, 2012 at 2:02 PM UTC
Looking back at photos of Christmases past.
An action shot of my youngest boy,
testing out his new hula hoop.
I can see my mother’s feet.
She’s sitting in her chair,
watching what must’ve felt
like the magic of the day
unfolding before her very eyes.
And, it was magic.
For a while her pain had subsided,
her knees didn’t hurt,
and she simply enjoyed her small,
nucleus, family as we unwrapped
the wonders laid out before us.
Her shoes,
the ones she deemed the most comfortable,
were yellow and black little tennies.
I called them her bumblebee shoes.
And, there they are in the bottom left corner of these last three photos.
Now, she’s gone.
Somewhere, around the corner, we say.
To the other side, we say.
But, she’s always near, we say.
And,
as I think of her now,
I imagine her as a drawing,
a cartoon,
like something that Bill Watterson
might have drawn up.
Bumblebee shoes,
looking a little bit like dinner rolls,
(That’s how Schultz described Watterson’s drawing of Calvin’s feet.)
her capri jeans,
showing her little birdie-like ankles,
and her comfy, orange Kool-aid Man shirt.
(I still have it.)
She’s still a bit wobbly,
unsteady on her feet,
but she’s doing okay.
So am I.
(Angela too.)
So’s Pops.
So are her grandkids.
We miss her.
And,
this Christmas is different,
that’s for sure.
But,
she walks into my thoughts,
coming from the kitchen of my memories,
carrying a cup of coffee
or
a plate of something wonderful for me to taste.
And, she’s always wearing her bumblebee shoes.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018
Dec 25, 2018
Dec 25, 2018 at 10:31 AM UTC
I can't speak for the others
I can only reflect on my own thoughts and the heat of discomfort.
I can't speak for the woman who wept beside her oversized suitcases on the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow, I can only consider her tears and what they did to my own heartache.
I didn't speak, but I reached over after several minutes of communal silence and placed a tissue (clean and unused) on her lap. Before I was back in my seat, she had taken it and covered her face in her grief and the tears came again.
The grandmother across from me got up next and placed a red stripped mint on the woman's skirt.
The dad who stood in the doorway, dressed for the beach, followed, leaving an offering of a capri-sun.
The child in the pram looked up at his mother and she smiled encouragement to him, as he offered his Spider-Man, pressing it to the woman's hand
and as she unveiled her face and saw the offerings, she laughed, brief and wet, but with a smile that stayed. She hugged Spider-Man, nodded and then with a sensibility to a child's needs, handed it back with thanks.
After a moment she found my eyes, and mimed a request for a fresh tissue and then in the silence she settled for her journey as we all looked away, dutifully silent.
Oct 19, 2022
Oct 19, 2022 at 11:55 AM UTC
There she would be
Under a spruce tree
Wild and free
Like sand at sea
Holding the waves frenzy
Filled with so much spree
Scenic and capri
Down to earth to thee
The rain and sun give her glee
Moon and stars zzz
Her roots are key
The door to the tree
A foundation to the marque
It's branches and leaves agree
Knock on wood she be
Logan Robertson
1/03/2019
Jan 3, 2019
Jan 3, 2019 at 8:44 PM UTC
paint fingers,
jelly mouths,
katie's teletubbies
bike helmet.
mom said
now don't go too far
and the park was just
far enough to not be
able to see the house
but close enough to
smell dinner being made
and hear dad mowing
the front yard. no
skinned knees this day
just riding our bikes
through the grass,
down the big hill
that made us scream
until the bottom. wind
blowing through katie's
hair, too long then from
her refusal to have it
trimmed even one inch,
and capri sun's under
the weeping willow tree.
before the sun went all
the way to her bed, we
made flower crowns
from the dandelions,
picked an extra handful
for the dining table,
waved to donna as we
flew down the sidewalk,
ran hand in hand to the door
before dad had to call our
names one more time.
Jun 29, 2017
Jun 29, 2017 at 2:22 AM UTC
Yesterday
I saw someone
Texting
During a documentary
About Syria
And I wrote
A lot of poems
About it
But today,
Sitting here,
Sipping
At my Capri Sun,
I don't feel
Like there's any less
Justification
For me
To be at
The center
Of my poems
Than that person
Texting so
Here's a poem
About me
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 5:57 PM UTC
all these people and their
"it's easy to sleep, ***
I'm up at six
with four things of Capri suns.
people sleeping and their
"My dreams are so fun!!"
I'm never sleeping,
I'm thinking of shotguns.
waking up pretty and their
"put your hair up in a bun!"
I'm busy trying to make my own source of income.
petty people with their
*** jiggle" (yeah, that's ***
I'm thinking Russian roulette would be my fun
Mar 20, 2021
Mar 20, 2021 at 4:30 AM UTC
if everything else you abandon in the recesses of the life you left behind, remember this:
(when you are holding back the explosion of a scream in the middle of the corridors, when you have a fist in your mouth and sobs rising in your throat while sitting in a lonely corner, when everything seems hopeless and the only way out of despair and anguish is the bottle of pills on your desk or the ladder up to the roof)
- you will always have something to return to. beyond the brick and mortar, beyond the concrete and tile, beyond the only home you have ever called your own or known as yours.
because home is people.
it always has been.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 8:14 AM UTC