"golightly" poems
maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through
glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,
that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating
the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,
cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab
hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,
his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,
3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,
liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks
in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-Whiz, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-
and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-Whiz crust in his stubble,
and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying
she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 4:25 PM UTC
I love the girl who is too young to smoke cigarettes but lights them anyway. She sits on the high school bleachers at 9 on a Sunday night, gets tired of the smoke in her eyes, and tosses eventual death in the trash can.
I love the girl who has never enjoyed the taste of alcohol but feels like Holly Golightly when she holds a glass of Cabernet so she drinks it anyway. She sits in her grandfather’s lounge chair on a Monday night, plays the songs he taught her on the ***** neglects her English essay, and leaves the red remains in the bottle.
I love the girl who cannot stand the sound of my guitar, but pretends to like acoustics because she knows the music brings out the best in me, and that even if she asks me to stop, I will play anyway. She lies on the floor on a Tuesday night, wishing she were in another town too small to be called a city, listens to melodies that remind her of where she is, ignores my creations and leaves my heart in her hands as she finally falls asleep.
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 1:39 AM UTC
"gravity has taken better men than me
just keep me where the light is"...John Clayton Mayer
where the light is...
this lyric gets carried from midnight to midnight next,
from troubled sleep to the bus stop, to and from work,
onto, back to, the homebound bus stop once again,
from solitary man to father to grandfather and cycles back
to once again a troubled sleeper poem writer,
who just wants to know, John,
when I find it, will, does the light fill, complete and heal the cracks...when I find that light...
in the city, starlight been banished by street lamps pointed downward, far too often it is believable that the whole world has been wrapped in white crinkled, filmy, wax paper, then,
how will the light know where it is needed most,
how will it find the empty chest cavity that writes these lines
there is real and artificial they say, nature vs. man made,
sun upon the face that heals for but an eight minute
bandaid summer ferry crossing, the fluorescent that says here, here is the bus stop, tarry, sit and rest, while you wait for
answer unscheduled, on a bench beneath to the street light
that illuminates a small swatch of street
between the dark spots on the x-ray of
this patient patient's soul awaiting,
are either of those
the light I need John?
no worries man, I'm just teasing, well knowing, neither of us,
tables turned, know where the light is, up high, down low,
if it is yellow or gold, if light is real or imagined,
only the sensation of the curettage needed to be healed when the
chest drained and the light supplants the drained fluids,
when it interferes, interpolates, how it found me or I it,
how I recognized it, how it reignited the home fire, and
I'll drop you line how light, lightly to find or be heavy found,
how light supersedes, defeats, the gravity of daily tugging,
and how what happens afterwards is golightly
up to us
2:10am **** it
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 2:21 AM UTC
Every morning
I wake up in a city
that feels a little more familiar
each time my eyelids bloom daffodils
on a fire escape horizon.
Maybe I’m in love with a Newness
that begins to feel like Home.
Maybe I dream dumpsters
in Flatbush
or shoot Harlem
into my forearms.
Use telephone wires as tourniquets.
Maybe this girl I’ve been seeing has traces
of Paradise in her bloodstream.
And then I have to remember this city is home to
Pizza Rat, and bedbugs in the metro benches,
and **** Holly Golightly,
she never had to take the F train.
But maybe
she and I can share some unspoken reality,
and I’ll walk down 5th Ave. one day
holding my lover’s hand
as the sun turns sidewalks silver
and we’ll decide to grab a
croissant.
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 11:44 AM UTC
At one
with the wind
in a midnight dress
a necklace
dripped around her throat
like raindrops
I didn’t buy
but should have
and
how she adored
the water-lily pond
I’d paint her
in delicious shades
myriad colours
but only an image
in the end
static
solid complete
now
heading
to Bemelmans
down Fifth Avenue
she dances
a dragonfly
in the winter dark
I catch her
twirl her
and the trees
don’t seem so empty
savour her voice
like fine caviar
study the liquid flow
of her legs
heels clicking on cobbles
my left foot
twists
and I wobble
breathe in her laugh
a detour
a walk into the park
skips along
snow-sieved paths
her hair
a merry jazz
in the bitter air
the strangers
think we are weird
and we find Alice
motionless in moonlight
a kiss on a cheek
sway circularly
until everything
smashes into a blur
and we spill
giggle like kids
seventeen again
can’t drink enough
of the evening
I ended up
in Wonderland
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 5:17 PM UTC
this, their-poem, emitting their call-sign,
those who once checked the box
of in love..a status of joyful revelation,
for all to see, all passerby’s, all witnesses
to the outstanding glowing skin,
the perms-frozen half smiles that
never are erased, you secret it not
so much,
for your body entire expels
the scent secreted of a world
in orbit
around
each other
then the unexplainable, threads go worn,
a slower tearing, one by one, till there
is not one, nary more any, you then
check the invisible box,
“not in a relationship”
and it feels like
a load has
been dropped onto you
from on high, flattened,
now cloaked in a demeanor
that cries out
they
put a load
right on me,
and you seek
excuses to recall ecstasy and
you start dancing to forget,
like a centrifugal whirlpool’s vortex,
whipping up the air surrounding
to heat a forgetting, till the until,
of collapsing shame offers up
arms to drown you, a relief offering,
and the words to “Yesterday”
are everywhere
reverberating
walking down the street
a somebody smiles to at, just,
for you,
without cause,
but a causal triggering
a singular event,
just a smile with edged up corners,
and suddenly you feet golightly,
and inexplicably inextricably
in the moment it is
all you can see,
and one starts to dance
to well
remember
and a poem
forms upon your silently moving
lips,
and a dance to remember
is finished,
starts up
a new one,
with similar familiar steps
a dance to believe in~
and laugh when
you say your name
out loud
you!
*are the poet of the way,
a new word choreographer*
and there will be a way,
always another way…
Sep 18, 2024
Sep 18, 2024 at 12:02 PM UTC
"The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of." - Holly Golightly, Breakfast At Tiffany's
i've been having the mean reds lately.
it's a paradox. how you're never the best, but when better ones come along, they pale in contrast to you. somehow i've come to love you in all your averageness, found beauty in your flaws. somehow your insignificance gave me a place to settle upon.
it's comfortable in your arms, and your smell assures me. please never allow me to lose you.
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 11:45 PM UTC
Is there a better tradition than Halloween?
When I was a child, cloaked in the velvety darkness,
The night felt like it was crackling with electricity, possibility.
Swapping candy, riding the trailer, being out late on a school night;
I realized from a young age nothing emboldens you like friends and the nighttime.
When I was a freshman in college, I saw Rocky Horror for the first time.
"Creature of the Night" rings in my ears as I
Put on makeup,
Take a swig of *****
Place on the final touches of my costume.
Halloween becomes a blurred vision of masks, laughter, and kisses.
Locking eyes across a room,
I am more alluring as
Daisy Buchanan
Holly Golightly
A fairy
Mary Poppins
Alice in Wonderland.
They're all cute, animated, familiar, warm.
Each day after Halloween is a sickly feeling,
nausea from overindulgence
I will always be emboldened by the night.
Nov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 at 10:05 PM UTC
of some hard rock
out of snow powder
the alarm ringing in the morn
when I have had two hours shut ******* eye
I love hell out of some butterbean ****
a handful of ***
the last drop of malt liquor
the taste of that last kiss
the sound of an unmuffled
69 Mustang
red of course
drive in movie screens
old quality movie stars:
Audrey Hepburn-
Holly Golightly-
you'll always remain in my
brain
Dec 21, 2016
Dec 21, 2016 at 9:42 PM UTC