"newbury" poems
Newbury
Strum chords
Very urban
Man
Hair in bun
Guitar
Strum strum
music stops
Forehead creases
I have to go now.
Says Into microphone
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 3:04 PM UTC
They squirm inside their clothes
tweed, chiffon tiered skirts, and bows
of their grandmothers’ sepia, halcyon days
with lumberjack flannel and Kerouac quotes,
but it’s more a matter of age than size,
these charging, listless, candid creatures
with hairstyles that can only be described
as gravity readily defied and self-cut,
frequently dyed to shades that swing
between black coffee and New York poetry
deep imagism and social realism against the backdrop
of American Apparel ads on scratched up Macs.
They slouch up and down trafficked Newbury,
dropping names like Morrissey and Bukowski
pausing now and then to pick up on the ennui
of twenty-three, and how they will one day live la vie
Dharhimian, running on American Spirits,
James Dean, Truffaut chic,
a monthly check from their parents,
an apathetic sneer at holding anything too dearly
and how they hate that word—hip-ster.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 6:44 PM UTC
Yesterday, while waiting for a bus on the corner of Newbury Street
I found God.
She carried a burlap sack over her shoulder a map of the world in her right hand and a bottle of whiskey in her left.
She asks me where I’m headed and I tell her I’m running.
She tells me she is too
She says: “ It all started when I was a kid, I held the solar system in my palm and took the colors from the palette of galaxies and finger painted the Earth.”
I took something that was nothing and made it everything.
And every day since, this world has thinned me.
Asking too much out of something too little.
I fear the darkness that was created from the light I produced.
Some days, all my body can do is act like the Earth and tremble.
And in the deepest hour, my heart grew heavier than the sky that watches us all so I let it go.
I let the pain rain down like morning dew getting caught on people’s cheekbones.
I want to purify the air and our oxygen of all that is unjust in every atom.
When I look into your eyes I see bigots,
I see sexists,
And killers
And I want to want to rid our days of the night but I can’t.
So instead, I hit children.
May they stay forever full of laughter and light
Of pigtails and play-doh and gummy worms and popsicle sticks.
white dresses and untied shoelaces.
In a world where guns double for dignity
Where love is a receipt
Where self-worth is measured by grade point average.
Dare not the dark fault their fair eyes.
Dare their souls not fall victim to the tainted being that is our sleepless nights and alleviated anguish.
When I look into your eyes, I see hate. But when I look through them, a see a child.
And so I lose myself on the bench of a bus stop on the corner of Newbury street.
Watching the world tumble down like a toddler learning to climb a staircase.
In my absence, the polluted cloud that makes its bed on our sky dissipates among the rain storms.
Should you run, you steal light from this fading life.
And I say to her
Show me how to be the bravery I ever so seldom see in the world.
I wanna lift bridges with poems
And I wanna lift poems out of my warm breath.
And she tells me
What rocky roads you have in front of you.
What hands you have yet to hold.
But I’ll tell you one thing
You’re already something
And something’s better than nothing
And that is everything.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 5:47 PM UTC
i.
OVERWHELMED! Reading Philip Whalen's "Sourdough Mountain Lookout"
in a Boston cafe' good music good vibes quick approaching
afternoon chocolate croissant puffed up in my belly heart puffed up
in my chest ready to yell leap skip jump make a ruckus frantic
search for pen and notebook of course the notebook is left in Ned's
dormitory almost don't have a pen and feel a short fall in my
gut. A walking (or sitting) cliche, scratching thoughts onto a
napkin as they come, total organic no preservatives except I stopped
to think before writing "scratching" -- no! not the word I wanted
the correct word is STREAM, STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, FLOW OF
EMOTION - like the beat legendaries whom I idolize but
what do I know... generations later, only had
****** (the cool hip term several
decades ago) and **** bourbon "Satan's **** that leaves me
sick and ***** Good delusion! Couchsurfing across the country,
drop by without notice, run broke, read books - poetry & the Autobiography
of Malcolm X, living off my parent's hard-earned capitalist cash...
ii.
Often I fear I am too young and
tender to survive in this world. Moments
like these - sitting, reading, basking
in a cafe - can make me overwhelmed,
Got to drop everything and sit, elbows
propped, palms cupping numb face,
to slow the rush of emotions pulsating
thru me. I am too big a fool, fall
in love too easily with everything.
The boy barista is prettier than I,
thought he was a girl when I
approached and shocked by his voice.
Angel with a black septum ring!
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 12:01 AM UTC
He don't leave me smiling like you did
But then again you left me crying too
Maybe he'll at least spare me the heartache
Jun 15, 2017
Jun 15, 2017 at 11:33 PM UTC