"mailed" poems
The night under the mirror
went through a revolving door.
~~~~
Eventually I did put a face
to your loving cues your emails
It had been so long since your destiny had asked you my King
to marry her
that hunting jealous day that began much earlier under a 1975 degree celcious and did burn us to a crisp
Nothing would have given me more assurance more pleasure such a gracious challenge to a mysterious
proposition to dig my heart
for the final blow
one queen for his other
prior queen bee me
Karijinbba
and a winner I would have been
all night with my King
under the mirror!
to obliterate her wedding band
from his hand
how loving of you cupid of mine
always digging at my heart
for my heart of gold
then came cause and effect of karma blowing up our plans
another King Brad appeared with roses and diamond ring
in hand he had no mask just an hidden agenda
he took my children to his Mom
to make his other queenjealous and I took the bate
for just one hour both my King and Brad
had chosen he same photo E-mailed among several
to both single men seeking bride at Kiss com.
my lovely picture was the same summer dress I wore with the king I loved
as someone something from above and beyond
mirrored the scene in my life a kind of cause and effect
it showed my
old beloved a simple approach to a woman's heart
and me that the woman he married giving her a diamond ring taking her and son to his Mom was more to make
me jealous too fight for his love
an invisible revolving door had opened up
both to win my lover back
or to lose both Knights
fate life karma G**
had bid the greatest game
of love and twin souls
remained split bleeding
both men found a way to another
woman playing their game
I was sent to worship my Lord Jesus Christ mocking me
beware of Karma
or THINK and get rich and happy
to catch a true king FOCUS
don't take bates, don't settle for new when the heart is taken
by a true love not followed.
My king was found by his mate
and I returned Brads diamond
lesson played leasson learned
Then came the clock ticking
tax collector King Mr Time
he took my hand
paper INK and pen
to script a new
poem
its Winter he said,
HOW DO YOU
WANT ME TO KISS YOU?
and a new revolving door
appeared here at H.P.
~~~~~~
By: Karijinbba
Copy Rights
ASG/BBA -revised 6/2020.
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 12:37 PM UTC
*The wait is an eternity like a mailed message.
The excitement of opening you up and reading every little text.
Your darkened ink hair dripping on my hands and I love the way you leave a flowered scent on them.
I play my favorite songs and I think of you.
The similarities we share lets me know the world is not vacant of awakened people.
I keep you in mind.
I keep you in mind when I scroll past one of your social media quotes and Like it.
You deserve my love, my unconditional love, my wild and passionate love, my fighting love.
I'm a clumsy mess, a reckless greasy rocker, a psychedelic wanderer but I'd gladly give you my best.
Dance with me on top of rooftops, in drunken heavenly ecstasy.
Playing music and looking into your eyes, you would read my soul and I would read yours and you would never ever feel alone again.
Breath me in, inhale deep, get high of me, smile, laugh, your my source of beauty.
Truth be told I don't want perfection, it's boring, I want you.
I want you with me when the apocalypse strikes.
I want you in the morning and in the night.
I want your angry tantrums because I know Life
And I want to heal you when you have them.
Athena, Otherworldly Goddess, Femenista, Mujer Guerillera, Gaia of Earth, I am your poet and you this poem.*
** - your secret admirer**
Jul 12, 2014
Jul 12, 2014 at 4:46 PM UTC
You're a volcano in winter
Made when the Earth splintered
Tectonic plates shifted
And you were gifted
The frigid air outside is subzero
So you become my volcanic hero
When you scorch the cold
With your warmth so bold
I await an eruption
But there's a disruption
Dormant you remain
With suspicion engrained
But entering your main vent
Was not my main intent
Yet now that I'm in your magma chamber
I can see your anger
You're made of lava and ash
So you demand drama and cash
And violently explode in a flash
You've become my Krakatoa
When I wish I didn't know ya
Because of your grand magnitude
I question my aptitude
And insecurity ensues
As confidence I lose
I realize I've gone too far
When I feel your lava discharge
That pushes me into your crater
The pain I feel couldn't be greater
When all I see is an ashen cloud
And all I hear is your lashing growl
Inside of your volcano
There is a tornado
As sure as day glow
I feel I must lay low
And dodge the debris
While playing referee
As you're dissecting me
In your burning sea
That swirls in a cyclone maelstrom
Hell is where it was mailed from
I receive it
Reprieveless
I begin to drown in fire
And wish to retire
You think you're neat
Yet despite your heat
You're a cold blooded lizard
But outside there's a blizzard
So I get used to your volcano
I can't contain my disdain though
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 6:18 AM UTC
SLOWLY the Moon her banderoles of light
Unfurls upon the sky; her fingers drip
Pale, silvery tides; her armoured warriors
Leave Day's bright tents of azure and of gold,
Wherein they hid them, and in silence flock
Upon the solemn battlefield of Night
To try great issues with the blind old king,
The Titan Darkness, who great Pharoah fought
With groping hands, and conquered for a span.
The starry hosts with silver lances *****
The scarlet fringes of the tents of Day,
And turn their crystal shields upon their *******
And point their radiant lances, and so wait
The stirring of the giant in his caves.
The solitary hills send long, sad sighs
As the blind Titan grasps their locks of pine
And trembling larch to drag him toward the sky,
That his wild-seeking hands may clutch the Moon
From her war-chariot, scythed and wheeled with light,
Crush bright-mailed stars, and so, a sightless king,
Reign in black desolation! Low-set vales
Weep under the black hollow of his foot,
While sobs the sea beneath his lashing hair
Of rolling mists, which, strong as iron cords,
Twine round tall masts and drag them to the reefs.
Swifter rolls up Astarte's light-scythed car;
Dense rise the jewelled lances, groves of light;
Red flouts Mars' banner in the voiceless war
(The mightiest combat is the tongueless one);
The silvery dartings of the lances *****
His fingers from the mountains, catch his locks
And toss them in black fragments to the winds,
Pierce the vast hollow of his misty foot,
Level their diamond tips against his breast,
And force him down to lair within his pit
And thro' its chinks ****** down his groping hands
To quicken Hell with horror-for the strength
That is not of the Heavens is of Hell.
8.3k
You are my secret love
would that it be other,
thus no mailed Valentine
to add to the clutter.
Feb 14, 2011
Feb 14, 2011 at 8:44 AM UTC
Online Greetings e-mailed Promised Meetings
Five minute friends Leave Fleetingly
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 8:15 AM UTC
MESSENGER
Now at the Seventh Gate the seventh chief,
Thy proper mother's son, I will announce,
What fortune for this city, for himself,
With curses he invoketh:--on the walls
Ascending, heralded as king, to stand,
With paeans for their capture; then with thee
To fight, and either slaying near thee die,
Or thee, who wronged him, chasing forth alive,
Requite in kind his proper banishment.
Such words he shouts, and calls upon the gods
Who o'er his race preside and Fatherland,
With gracious eye to look upon his prayers.
A well-wrought buckler, newly forged, he bears,
With twofold blazon riveted thereon,
For there a woman leads, with sober mien,
A mailed warrior, enchased in gold;
Justice her style, and thus the legend speaks:--
'This man I will restore, and he shall hold
The city and his father's palace homes.'
Such the devices of the hostile chiefs.
'Tis for thyself to choose whom thou wilt send;
But never shalt thou blame my herald-words.
To guide the rudder of the State be thine!
ETEOCLES
O heaven-demented race of Oedipus,
My race, tear-fraught, detested of the gods!
Alas, our father's curses now bear fruit.
But it beseems not to lament or weep,
Lest lamentations sadder still be born.
For him, too truly Polyneikes named,--
What his device will work we soon shall know;
Whether his braggart words, with madness fraught,
Gold-blazoned on his shield, shall lead him back.
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Guided his deeds and thoughts, this might have been;
But neither when he fled the darksome womb,
Or in his childhood, or in youth's fair prime,
Or when the hair thick gathered on his chin,
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Nor in this outrage on his Fatherland
Deem I she now beside him deigns to stand.
For Justice would in sooth belie her name,
Did she with this all-daring man consort.
In these regards confiding will I go,
Myself will meet him. Who with better right?
Brother to brother, chieftain against chief,
Foeman to foe, I'll stand. Quick, bring my spear,
My greaves, and armor, bulwark against stones.
4.8k
I waited for you.
I waited so long frost kissed the ground.
Tear drops evaporated and fell back rhythmically to the earth.
I waited so long I wrote 36 letters and never mailed a single one.
I waited so long seasons became reasons to wrap hopes fragile neck in the noose you gave me when you left.
But still I waited.
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 7:33 PM UTC
Please come and find me.
Playful whispers in the dark.
Who am I calling?
I suppose...
My baby,
Can I call you baby?
O sweet lullabyes in the night,
Hold me in mild constriction.
Squeeze a little bit tighter, love.
I don't know how much time I have left.
Delusional!
Alone on the vacuum.
Scratching at air for any oxygen my depraved lungs can find,
Suffocating on your love,
Choking on your divinity.
Oh darling,
My sweet crimson lover
Dancing on the bridge of death at the break of dawn,
You swing me in your arms,
Tight tongue behind your violent grin,
Your hair grows stars, and your arms bend time,
my fatal partner in a tango to the edge of the earth.
Heartless as you torture me,
Wrench my soul playfully,
Foolishly and ignorantly,
Pulling my strings.
Enacting
autopilot daydreams
Painting mindless patterns
On an inky black sky,
Orange slices on existential beach
Sparkling warm coast,
The cosmos like a bright sunny day above.
Bitter ashes mix and churn with the sand,
I'm sinking,
Quickly,
Help me!
But you just watch.
And I sink until I hit the bottom
And there I lie,
Falling asleep to as my grief fills the ocean.
The zodiac locked fate,
Fish and Virgins! Fish and Virgins!
Poets and failures,
Academics and frauds,
Spring and summer to autumn and madness,
My eternal indigo diary,
My blueberry lipstick,
My lavender kiss.
Leaving light stains on my love-lorn letters,
Mailed to you on Sunday,
Delivered along the Milky Way.
Waiting emptily,
In an empty white asylum,
With an empty mind,
Waiting for you,
My answer,
My meaning,
My red and blue jumper.
Not standing up to stretch,
But sitting still,
Letting my bones grow stiff,
To creak under my weight,
Like an old back porch,
Made for a pair of old lovers,
Desolate,
Withered by neglect,
Empty.
A pointless pray for solace,
In hope you will come,
My prince of waves,
My fifth science,
My escape from this never ending sporadic spiral down into the murky, dusty, purple fog of asinine and inane.
My peace of mind.
My baby.
Can I call you baby?
Mar 27, 2019
Mar 27, 2019 at 8:51 PM UTC
The horizons ring me like *******
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their ***** wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.
3.3k
As so many of you have had difficulty purchasing “We Walked in His Garden” here at HP, I have decided to post the book in its entirety at Poetfreak (www.poetfreak.com). I do alas have one final request to ask of you all. As this project was initially intended to benefit The Matthew Talbot Hostel, a homeless shelter that was very dear to Paddy’s heart, I would ask that you please consider making a small donation to this worthy cause. The amount is entirely up to you.
Checks in any currency may be made out to the Matthew Talbot Hostel and mailed to:
The Matthew Talbot Hostel
22 Matthew Talbot Place,
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Australia
If you managed to purchase the book here, I assure you that 100% of what you paid will soon be on its way to them.
Well, with this I must say goodbye for a while. I have some personal issues to attend that simply cannot wait any longer. You have all been wonderful throughout and have shown that although we may have very different ways of looking at the world, deep down, we are a family that truly cares about one another. When you think about it, there can be no greater honor to the memory of Paddy Martin than that.
Patrick
Mar 31, 2011
Mar 31, 2011 at 6:42 AM UTC
i met him in 1989 in a study hall class
and haven't forgotten him since.
a month ago,
i found out he had died in 2014.
the girls liked him
he'de tell me what was playing on his walkman
so i listened, learned, put a penny in an envelope
and mailed it off to columbia house
some weeks later i received my 12 cassette tapes.
i quit eating and got creative with eyeliner.
i memorized a lot of cure lyrics and went to study hall
prepared.
the semester ended and we weren't in the same
study hall class anymore. he ended up transferring to another school.
but i still had hope.
i had memorized so many lyrics.
i had gotten my hair cut into an inverted bob
and learned how to dye it black.
it felt like anything was possible
and it felt so good.
the next year
i transfered to the other school, but he wasn't there anymore.
the year after that
i transfered to an even worse school
he was there
finally.
soon after that,
emily became his girlfriend
one day, i ran into them at the park and ride
as i was getting off the bus
we spent the night on the sidewalk
outside of emily's dad's house.
none of us were allowed to go inside,
not even emily.
but emily managed to sneak inside
and stole a jug of homemade alcohol,
which we did not call moonshine.
emily fell asleep with her head in his lap
while we talked, smoked three packs of cigarettes (all mine), and drank the homemade alcohol that her dad had made.
emily wanted to be a fashion designer.
he really believed in emily and her drawings.
the sun came up
and i caught a bus home.
we both ended up
dropping out of highschool.
Jun 27, 2017
Jun 27, 2017 at 8:05 AM UTC
For Robert Lowell
This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars--
planets, that is--the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!--a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
2.9k
Working under a cloud of sadness
Cleaning a mother’s home
After their death.
All the familiar objects
Are so much heavier
Loaded with emotion
Triggered by every trinket touched.
And the unfamiliar
Items never seen before
Not really secret
But secretive
Shed an unfamiliar light
Or a tragic one
On the lost life.
Add some desire you had
For resolution
Or proof of affection
A letter un-mailed, explaining…
Everything, less,
Or adding further mysteries.
Photos signed with a revealing scrawl
In a curious masculine hand.
And flowing in your mind
As you reduce a life to a list
For disposal, dispersal
A certainty
A knowing
That what you see is not the whole
The whole life
There’s something missing
That might explain
Her wistful expression
Her unexpressed longing,
The aura of regret,
You recall it easily.
A perfume of disappointment
Lingering.
And when you finally
Discover her dark journals
Her writing, but reflecting a stranger
A talent, a power, a presence
Never revealed, never known
But rich and sharp
With bright witty language
You understand this is a set of wings
Dusty with neglect
Heavy with melancholia
Unused wings.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 2:01 PM UTC
You think you know what it's like to give up your heart completely?
To drink your heart break into a shattered glass with your blood & tears?
I blamed myself, I didn't think I was good enough, I was hateful of myself.
**** me, **** you, **** everything.
Tears dripping on my pillow like a broken dream.
**** I fought people thinking that it would fix my pain.
Knuckles feigning to fight.
All the times I texted, called, voice mailed, and messaged and nothing.
You don't know pain.
You don't know Johnny Cash "hurt".
The past haunts me like a ghost and it won't let go.
Aug 16, 2016
Aug 16, 2016 at 11:46 PM UTC
The horizons ring me like *******
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their ***** wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.
2.9k
“What can a poem do?”
—————————-
***”A poem
is a not a tourniquet
when you’re bleeding.
It’s not water when you’re thirsty
or food when you’re hungry.
A poem can’t protect you from an airstrike,
or from abduction, or from hate.
It’s hard to write when our words feel
like they’re not enough—they can’t do
the real, tangible work of saving lives,
or making people safer.”***
(see (1) Maggie Smith)
<~>
as is my wont,
I write,
as is my Natted~inhabited,
retiring to the local watering holes of
Cerebrum & Cerebellum,
them regular haunts,
where all requests are mailed, processed, satisfied & marked;
‘return & render to the sender, who’s on a cerebral ******
and that request?
‘give me the words’ (2)
those ‘to do’ words, floaters, direct to top of list,
those ‘can do’ words, that can effect the affect,
spare the despair, realize the fungible, concretize cures,
soften hard waters, giving a worsening worn life fabric a
curated baby blanket feel, a 4-ply human tissue of
‘words that tell me everything’ (2)
salve solution verbs that bounty-wipe spills in entirety,
vacuum up spillage spoiling of 17 days of terrible nouns,
uncovered-unknown rages caused by inflicting prepositions
released a hatred rising,
safety rebury it deeper, drug & destruct the sleeper agents,
and let me start over again with
‘telling me everything by saying nothing’ (2)
the pausal silence, the quieted spaces tween the heartbeats,
where ‘reflection,’
the noun,
and its world of alternations,
reflection,
the noun,
look inwards, but shining outward,
this, this!
is where the poem goes to do!
enervating & arresting
its contradictory powers
rock you into wild docility,
possessive and submissive,
contradictory interferences,
smoothing the roughness,
closing the gaps it opens,
healing the caused truthful cuts,
with words that tell you
everything and nothing,
open the holes, filling the gaps,
that is what a
poem do,
in and by
the manner it is spoken…
<~>
“Sometimes a poem is the stone you carry in your pocket—the one you rub when you’re worried. Let’s fill our pockets with poems.”
(see (1) Maggie Smith)
Oct 24, 2023
Oct 24, 2023 at 10:10 PM UTC
Passing over mountains
and forging over fords
slipping though forests
filled with dappled shapes,
the Coward-King makes his escape
His heart is beating
and his mind is fleeing
As behind Him
burns all he has ever known
His kingdom ablaze
His cities razed
Fields salted
books torn and statues melted
His people fighting in the ruins
dying ,trying,
to let this not be the end
Flee Coward-King
as your nature becomes known
as the mailed fist torches your own.
**** whats been done!
the Great Enemy has come!
the dread Master
of a dark and terrible horde
and his servants seek you
with ****** swords
Dark Knights on vile steeds
Grim men of black heart
Exiles and renegades
each eager to do his part
To bring you low
to make sure you reap
what you've sown
Can you hear the hounds a baying?
Neath the trees swaying
was that the sound of horses neighing?
The shadows playing
Your wits derailing,
Coward-King,
Your fortress walls have failed
and your flight will be to no avail
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 4:45 PM UTC
I mailed you a letter because you said
the art of writing is dead but I know
how to twist words into sculptures still small
enough to fit in the post box. I hope
you read what I wrote. I opened my heart
and sent you a poem. Someday when you’re old
you will show your grand kids the written art
some hopeless romantic girl undersold,
prefaced with ‘it isn't anything great but
maybe it will lead you to understand.’
I never claimed to be the best but my
head is full of cosmos and volcanoes
begging to explode black holes on paper as
relics pressed between pages like a dried rose.
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 1:24 PM UTC
maybe in the past life,
we met each other
as the sun and the moon
during the first eclipse.
maybe we met
as the wind and
that mailed letters that flew
out of a messenger's bag.
maybe we met
as the shore and the sand,
and we carved our promises
on tree barks
to meet and fall in love again
here,
in places made of sunsets
behind skyscrapers
and storms that fit
inside these words.
and now,
trees have gone scarce
but i'm carving a new promise
on your lips with my ink:
let's meet again in the next life
and i hope centuries from now,
i'll meet you in the peak
of the ferris wheels;
you were still scared of heights
when we lived our third lives.
i hope i'll meet you
when i look away
after making up constellations
from the first stars that
come in with the dusk.
i hope i'll meet you
in coffee stained shirts
worn in underrated poetry classes.
and in case
we get to read this poem,
i hope can we recognize that
it's written by me.
i hope we can recognize that
it's written for you.
Nov 1, 2019
Nov 1, 2019 at 5:18 AM UTC
Nothing satisfies me as much as
Signs of universal love
Gifts posted from above
Mailed to my heart
That and
cake
Oct 28, 2018
Oct 28, 2018 at 5:15 AM UTC
I texted you,
You Whatsapped back.
I posted on your Wall,
You pinged me on GTalk.
I pinged back on GTalk,
You Vibered me.
I buzzed you on Lync,
You mailed me on Yahoo.
I messaged you on FB,
You shared a post on G+.
I messaged you on Linked In,
You sent a talking parrot on Farmville.
Seriously?
I invited you to an Outlook meeting,
You invited me to your Picasa album.
I pinned an interest,
You YouTubed yours.
I wrote this blog post
while you Tweeted.
It's time to throw away
this smartphone
and call home.
If you don't answer,
I'll see your light on,
cross the street
and knock on your door.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 12:56 AM UTC
Flee, as the desire go towards bad reputation.
Change course as if end is calling.
Still counting but the dirt isnt moving.
Feet and effort comes together.
Like nothing happens in days.
Picture framed a portrait.
Selfie as they say it bluntly.
Peace as if peaceful in that place.
Every tick of the time.
Dots are dancing in the floor.
No orchestrated music at all.
Free, as they whispered it to one another.
With the blaming tongues and teeth.
They mailed it to their eardrum.
Lie, no hope yet there is still.
Truth, Egypt is the mountain.
Bigger as the trust settled in.
Watch them fall to their knees.
For I say repeatedly in this case.
There is still hope, there is still.
Just trace the ace for better is the Sky.
Than any developers of this land.
They may come armored in gold and silver.
With the finest stones and strong words.
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 2:32 AM UTC
While the wine and cheese and skinny upturned mustaches
Were all there,
Wrapped in gold tissue paper and tied with white bows
The passion, desire, and spark
(which were promised by the $24.99 guidebook)
Were nowhere to be found,
Not even floating down a gondola on the Seine
(or am I thinking of Venice now?)
I wrote home in two postcards
(not because I had so much to say)
But because I thought my family should see the Eiffel Tower in both day and night
As plastered on the pair of plastic, flimsy cards I mailed away.
Being away from Mom and Dad, I thought I’d enjoy it
But after investing in a French-English Dictionary
I learned that the love letters I’d been receiving here
(voulez vous coucher avec moi?)
Weren’t so lovely after all.
I told them that I’d tried French Onion soup,
That I’d walked down that street featured in Midnight in Paris,
and that between the guns slung over shoulders
(worn like fake Louis Vuittons advertised by desperate venders)
and the solicitors outside the Moulin Rouge
the city of love
had shattered my unprotected heart.
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 7:53 PM UTC
I used to live with these two friends—
A long-haired Navajo guy that was into Satan & Death Metal,
and an average white guy into Star Wars & Metallica.
This one night
we were going to see Danzig in concert.
Before we went to the show
we had to get a money order and mail it to our landlord
for rent.
The three of us went inside the Circle K,
got the money order, cigarettes, and some water.
On the way out,
back to the car,
there was an old, crusty, homeless Native guy
his neck draped in rosaries,
like Mr. T is in gold.
As we walked by, he said,
“Can you guys spare some change?”
“Sure,” my Navajo friend said, digging his pocket for change.
He was just about to drop a handful of coins
into the bum’s hand
when the old guy said,
“Oh thank you. God bless you …”
A smile came over my Navajo friend’s face
as he put the change back into his pocket.
“Nope. You shouldn’t have said that. You just HAD to bring God into it, didnt you?”
“Ohhh **** you,” the old guy yelled.
“Why don’t you ask God for some money then?"
We all laughed getting in the car.
The old *** kept talking.
“Just get outta here. Something bad is gonna happen to you boys. Go, get away from me. Something bad is gonna happen to you …”
My Navajo friend didn't miss a beat,
“Yeah? Well, if you don’t shut the **** up, something bad is gonna happen to YOU ************
The old man looked down to his rosaries and began to pray.
We drove across the street to the post office
to mail the money order for the rent.
The boys stayed in the car while I got out to mail it.
The post office was already closed
and all they had were those stubby little pencils.
It had to be signed in ink.
I went back outside
“You guys have a pen?”
“Nope.”
****
“Just ask somebody. And hurry up, we're gonna be late!”
Just then I saw a plump, middle-aged woman getting out of a minivan.
I approached her.
“Excuse me? Ma’am? Do you happen to have a pen I could use? I have to send off a money order for rent and I just realized I don’t have one …?
The lady sighed heavily, sounding annoyed, she turned back around
and began walking back to her minivan.
“I’m sorry to put you out, I just HAVE TO send this out…”
Getting into her van, she turned around and screamed at me,
“I don’t have any money for you to take from me. I WILL NOT BE ACCOSTED!”
She started the minivan and made a quick getaway.
“What the hell happened?”
“That crazy broad thought I was trying to rob her.”
We all laughed our ***** off at her choice of words:
ACCOSTED.
As we drove off, I remembered the old man’s words
“something bad is gonna happen.”
It coulda been worse.
So we said **** it and mailed it the next day.
The late fee was $15.00.
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 12:12 PM UTC