"moleskine" poems
a mini moleskine notebook lays in the
pocket of my bright yellow raincoat
binoculars in hand, I seek out your face
amidst the crashing tundra waves.
you call out my name just as the fog
horn blows, I stop to smile, and continue
to watch the goldfinches zoom out of
sight into the grey vast sea of everlasting
winter solemnity.
I think about the days that should have come
as puffins nestle in cozy branches hiding
away from the bitter cold, as you and me
are left outside, bare.
skipping rocks has become such a bore
if I am not able to do it with you.
the touch of your delicate lips as
we swooned in the moonlight to
french jazz and the fishing knots that
would come undone no matter how many
times we tried to go ashore in that rusty
old boat, both dressed as sailors.
I’m content here in solitude away from the
ambiguous world, in our own making,
hidden from reality.
in our own frost-ridden snow globe,
if you must. lost in time, stepping
to our transient melody.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 9:23 PM UTC
Come here.
Let’s.
Let’s?
Let’s…
Let’s.
Come here.
Listen to Edith Piaf
(So hipster, n'est-ce pas?)
and the scratch of her
voice on the turntable,
will be ours
to keep in Moleskine
notebooks of memory.
So that we’ll try to believe,
love is actually a thing.
Let’s.
Come here.
This quaint room will be
ours,
our guest, as we breathe life
into the coffee cups, wooden chairs.
We’ll give it a nose, yes.
Lightbulbs will smell red
wine in fingerprinted glasses.
Windows will drink
us,
to us.
And we’ll laugh, our faces
hot and sad, mouths
crammed with French
fries.
A scene blurred with happiness.
Let’s.
Come here.
Trash the hands of every
boy, who’s spread himself
out on marginalia of our days.
Slathered himself on pieces
of time we wish we had hugged to ourselves.
Hate, hate, hate
him, we’ll say.
And his **** hands.
Let’s.
Come here.
Our eyes will be fireflies
behind our glasses,
in this cinema’s night, as we ‘swoon’
at rom-coms as buttery
as the popcorn we bought in the interval.
Life’s too short, we say.
Eat about it, drink about it,
maybe even talk about it.
Forget about it.
Let’s.
Come here.
Talk, about nothing.
We’ll all be dead one day.
Let’s.
Come here.
We can be friends.
Let’s.
Let’s.
Let’s.
Let’s?
(And your giggle will end
all and every verse written.
I’m **** sure of it.)
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 3:31 PM UTC
I’m sitting on a fume couch with ashtray
legs, counting the khaki strands
in the beaded curtain that dices
the hallway up into barcodes. The table
by the fridge is a cable spool lead-
painted to match the molding. Around
it is a mesh-back lawn chair, a SoCal
fold-out from a SoHo dumpster,
a spill-trayless booster seat,
and a bottle cap barstool. Everyone’s
wearing second-hand sport coats
with seam stitches as loose as telephone
wires tacked up with undersized lapel
pins.
**** Capitalism. **** Disco.
Bathe Avant-Garde. Eat Paint.
Bleed ******* Smoke Local.
Espresso, Or Genocide.
Dresden Was A Lie.
Shrink-Wrap It All.
Everyone is clustered around the cinder-
block stand record player, grooving
to the pops, looking like a rag-tag tide
change beneath the broken-oar ceiling
fan. Everyone’s wearing ironic scarves
tight like corporate ties to keep their throats
from popping ten-cent parasols, loose tobacco,
and ******** Amid their rubber flower talk,
I can pick out San Pelicano, someone critiquing
Keats’ “Politics,” and a rant regarding some
guy downtown’s stab at post-contemporary
Pointillism in some gallery I’ve never heard of.
They’re flipping between topics like a Moleskine notebook
while I skim through a copy of the Onion,
teasing the edges with a lighter I found on the floor.
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 9:00 AM UTC
Tonight, my bed is uninviting, and the moon too bright.
I get down on my knees; I send you
a prayer:
I hope you still find strands of my hair
clinging to your sheets, collected in the dryer’s lint trap,
strewn at the back of your dresser drawers.
Despite the figures of my absence-- in lunar cycles and miles--
I sometimes linger in that humming interlude before sleep,
picturing you twisting in those wrinkled sheets,
flipping the pillow only to uncover my lingering scent.
The full moon is glaring; You,
like myself, must be restless
at this witching hour, stringing
words together, our thread-count tripling
as the stars blink out. But,
close that tired moleskine eulogy. Tuck
it in some ill-attended corner of your
room along with the remaining,
waning remnants of me,
and sleep.
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 12:14 AM UTC
Le Troquet le Méribel à Croix-Daurade
(Chronique des années de Blues et de fièvres)
C'était un bar de Croix-Daurade,
Dans les années soixante-dix,
Placé sur la route d'Albi,
Près du Lycée Raymond-Naves
Qui lui donnait sa clientèle
De jeunes gens émerveillés
De découvrir leur liberté
**** des regards de leurs parents
Ce bar était dans l’air du temps,
Des banquettes de moleskine
Un jukebox passant les tubes
De ces «golden seventies»
dont les jeunesses s’étaient saisies
Pour jeter les bases d’un Monde
Qui puisse leur ressembler un peu
Les chansons étaient leurs bannières :
Parfois «Let It Be» des Beatles, parfois
«My Sweet Lord» de Georges Harrison
Quelque fois, l'harmonica de Dylan
Évoquant Monsieur «Tambourine Man»,
Et bien d'autres que j’ai oubliées.
Nous buvions le plus souvent
Des petits noirs sans soif ni fin,
Parfois quelques bières pour les garçons
Des diabolos menthe pour les filles.
Nos conversations infinies,
S'enflammaient d'esquisses de flirt,
Et nous étions tous fascinés,
par leurs regards pareil à des aimants,
Leurs les longs cheveux dénoués,
et leurs yeux emplis de lumière.
Les filles nous semblaient belles et douces
Et nous n'osions pas assez le leur dire.
Mais leur présence charmante
Piquaient notre fièvre de «Tchatcher»
Lorsqu'il y eu la grève au lycée,
Suite aux blessures infligées
au normalien, Richard Deshayes
Le café devint un vrai QG,
Où nous préparions nos expéditions,
Des militants vinrent recruter,
Et nous initièrent aux querelles
Qui n'avaient rien à envier
A celles des Byzantins assiégés.
Il y avait le bel Alfredo,
Et des étudiants qui faisaient
Tourner la tête aux Lycéennes .
C’étaient comme l’écrivit Louis Aragon :
«Des temps déraisonnables»
Mais c’était une époque de fantaisie
Ou le demain se conjuguait
Au rythme de notre insolence
Et d’une soif de vivre sans pareil.
Paul Arrighi
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 7:09 AM UTC
I wonder why everything I write on paper is so depressing
And why my mind picks random lines from poetry to recite over and over like quiet prayers (is this my religion? words and stories?)
Why red ink tastes like sin (no that's too cliche) like seduction?
Why the cover of this moleskine is so soft and forgiving (I swear just for me) the sigh into a trusted friend's shoulder
I can't cry any more so I'll sing badly but fervently songs that help soothe the gnawing ache inside
Cherish the few people who make me feel full and whole (Banish the phantom pains for limbs or extensions of me I've lost)
I'll exhale poems to ravel up the bad feelings
It's a struggle or maybe just a war that I just don't want to lose any more
Jul 6, 2013
Jul 6, 2013 at 7:05 AM UTC
I am a therapist
But
I wanted to be an artist
Clay under my fingernails, in my curls, drying on my skin.
Filling up my moleskine
Occupying my thoughts, my dreams,
each moment of every day
Now.....
Now, I listen to people's pain, their sorrow, their hurt.
5 years of grad school, fancy acronyms at the end of my name, they can call me doctor...some do. some insist. perhaps it makes them feel like I am more than just an imperfect human like they are.
My clients come to me with their pain, I see them, I hear them, I try, I try so hard to soothe them, make them feel worthy, make them feel good enough. make them feel loved. deserving of love.
Some days, being a psychologist provides so much meaning to my life, other days...other days I cry and punish myself for not pursuing art.
Why didn't I do it?
Why was I so scared?
Why did I let the **** talking from my parents and the judgements of my family keep me from doing what I loved?
WHY.
Hey, you want to know how to make me cry instantaneously?
Ask me about what I gave up to be where I am today.
what I lost for the acronyms,
what I lost for the title,
what I lost for the salary,
what I lost so my mom could tell people her daughter was a
"doctor" (not a real one even still)
Ask me what I lost.
Ask me how I lay awake at night, stare off into space, doing math in my mind, thinking, wondering, planning out how to grow my practice to make enough to rent a studio space, buy a kiln, and make art once again.
Ask me why I got a doctorate in psychology so all I could think about was how to make art again.
Ask me.
I dare you.
My own therapist just did and my make up smeared.
I think sobbed is the technical term.
Or perhaps, I just let all the feelings and sadness bleed out of me. every now and again they do
every now and again I let down my defenses, remove the distractions, and find the time to really think and reflect on what I lost.
what I gave up to allow myself to make money off of listening to people.
I allow myself to be used and profit from it.
JUST like my family uses me and takes up far too much space.
I provide care to others because it's my job, but it's also what I've always known how to do, what I was taught to do.
Taking care of others is ******* exhausting.
I love my job.
I hate my job.
Ya know what?
I never hated art.
I never did.
Art never took from me.
Clay never used me and spit me out or told me things like "I'm not getting anything from you" like my clients have told me.
clay Doesn't take.
clay only gave.
ceramics only ever gave.
WHY the **** did I not allow myself to take?
WHY did I create a life for myself where I am continuously giving and people are continuously taking?
I am so ******* empty and so ******* tired.
I just want to make art.
all i ever wanted was to make art.
Oct 5, 2020
Oct 5, 2020 at 2:16 PM UTC
We are small men, both of us,
For all our these won’t happen dreams
That we write down in Moleskine notebooks
Bought in last year’s sales at bottom dollar,
Both of us in ‘high performance’ coats with waterproof taped seams
And hoods that fold away inside the collar,
Both in don’t quite fit me supermarket jeans that don’t improve our looks.
But both of us are poets, each in our own way,
Though neither of us, really, has very much to say.
We are small men, both of us,
But both of us are poets, each in our own way.
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 1:03 PM UTC
draw me out of your moleskine,
I'll come alive that way.
I can be the one you want,
if not then on the pages I will stay.
you can dress me how you like,
just make sure you use pen.
you see, there's nothing worse
than uncertainty in men.
Mar 6, 2012
Mar 6, 2012 at 12:47 PM UTC