"peacoat" poems
Orange peel Thursdays and the Velcro shoes
Of children hordes
Who spider up Alice on toadstools in Central Park
Dusted psilocybin shoots my eyes through
With the clarity of ice and sliced mushroom
Steeping in stomach acid before finding blood
The kids are tripping like madmen or halloween candy
Like its time to release and give up to the nonsense
And let your young self congeal to a saccharine sludge
I don’t stroll in the park to keep my mind sharp
I’m here because it’s a riot
My head can throb to the jittery birds
And the blasts of carsong
It’s the right kind of rhythm to walk to
** ** **
Ketamine days and the lolling slums
To make sure the insane stay insane
And the hobos are washed with spit from the clouds
And the subway exhaust always hangs in our hair
And the old Coney Island burns again and twice more
We don’t pretend to understand what we see
In subway grates thirty feet wide
Like the earth punching out of work for a bit
Opening to you her *** belly
So you can check out the strips of metal inside
Before she slurps you down and with an esophageal squeeze
Shoots you through the turnstiles
The train squeals and grinds down our eyes
With thoughts as slow as ketamine
Makes room for schizophrenia in a conversation
We’re listening to ‘til sundown
** ** **
Years full of Brooklyn and the assorted pills
Makes offal fit for punks in name brand shoes
Squared off with police in the park
Being beaten for the fun of being beaten
Peacoat locals pass the days in supermarkets
And you grow up to the loony mumble
Of the woman who knows the boat
Moored at the end of the street
Mansion of the stray cat colony
You help her with her daily chore to feed them
Tabbies popping the pills of the homeless
And puking in tandem all over their house
Living off generous dying folk
Feb 11, 2010
Feb 11, 2010 at 4:02 PM UTC
Memory comes quickly and goes faster still.
Childhood blurs and bends from the action
to nostalgia to nothing to a surprise visit
and ultimately, back to nothing.
It's never formal, opting out of knocking
before entering with muddy sneakers
and corn-butter-dribbled chin.
The hues of a late, summer afternoon
filled with fireflies and barbecue smell
connect the doorbell circuit
and make itself at home
before ears or legs can bid welcome.
Smile and greet one another breathless
only to depart at a moment's notice
as if the nomad suddenly realized
that no crop or solace remains.
So distinctly different
than that of a severed relationship,
which typically takes its bitter, sweet time.
For months, that fracture can stay and continue asking
for another Earl Grey and bowlful of discontent,
adding in spurts of lonely self-conversation
every several, silence-ridden hours.
Eventually, ever so carefully and quietly,
it tip-toes away with lip-marked cup and peacoat
at the moment when you've unwillingly returned
from the kitchen to fill pained guest's requests
but the only thing that remains
are indents in the leather armrests
and moisture gone cold.
Flashed across mind's eye and on its way.
The hollow fills itself endlessly with present
and distantly connects with past to find
that neither can be here while the other exists.
Start again and re-ember remembering,
drifted away on a silent plane
of glazed eyes and wide smile.
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 10:42 PM UTC
Trees always have to go out with a bang, don't they
explosions of bursting color
freeze-framed fireworks of fall
bursting and cascading,
leaving ashes and hot coals to cool in soft grass
...I used bursting twice, didn't I?
alright, let me go open up my thesaurus...
blast? pop? rupture?
just replace it with one of those and call it good.
Back to the poem:
my popped-collar peacoat straightens my back
gotta match my posture to the pompous portrait
black wool on an over-scratched scratch paper
might as well just pick it all off
allow the color some room to expand
(I don't even own a peacoat, I just like the metaphor and imagery)
you could set the sentinel alight for the same effect
a more smokey atmosphere, sure,
but the color would be a little brighter
and I'd have the mushroom of smoke to match my coat
I've substituted my earbuds with the crunch crunch crunch
of leaves
crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch ––––
shoot that one looked good but it just flattened
crunch crunch crunch
invariable sound
back to my Beats by Dr. Dre
The arrow of geese points south
...
that's really all I have to say about that
some sort of metaphor about flapping my arms and following them?
I like jacket weather though
better stay grounded
hands in pockets; arms in long sleeves
insert some connection to death to match nature's descent into winter
Gosh, this season is too good to stand for something so sad
let's go jump off the roof into a pile of leaves
drink hot soup and get cuffed
watch steam and frost paint picturesque mornings
read in a dogpile of blankets
Winter may be coming
but so is spring ya goof
get off your melancholic horsey
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 12:10 AM UTC
Hacked
Every hook
Every cue
Every one of my references and internal pantheon
He's wired into it.
How did that happen?
He's a stranger
I didn't even know he existed two weeks ago
And yet...
He gets it so right every time.
~~
self referential
I like it when he writes of me. To me.
That curly feeling.
His revelations, and the mirror held up.
Tribute, affection, the wry smile of a stranger.
The slightly bonkers obsession and fascination.
Glimpses of a convoluted mind.
~~
Rib Ice
Standing on thin ice
Peacoat open, arms wide
I step into that hug
Burned by warm skin and hard ribs
Even more by his kiss
He likes to hear me moan
~~
Whose mindfuck now?
Are my actions consistent with my words?
Am I as I say I am?
Do I mean what I say, or am I playing you?
How's your ******** detector?
cards on the table time
abdicate or defecate
ante up
~~
headlong
He leads me on a scavenger hunt, insinuating, enticing, pulling me into dark corners to kiss me and probe me intimately, until we're off to cross the next threshold in this trip...
I have no idea how I got here. Turned round, disoriented, down the rabbit hole.
~~
Deep Purple
On the way out
Curious discoveries
Door handle sticky
Musk in the air
Who's that knocking at my back door?
~~
Goddess, lit
I like this intimate touch I have on your mind and emotions. It makes me feel powerful and protective of you. And pulls me closer in.
When you say I am a goddess, your goddess, I suspend disbelief and nod in acknowledgment and agreement. Yes, of course. In those times, I know I am powerful, wise, feminine, and mysterious, And that you are before me, kneeling, clasping my legs, leaning on me, head against hip and belly, worshipful.
And sometimes, you clasp my wrist as I'm turning to go and pull me back, quietly certain and not to be resisted. Inevitable. And then what? Kisses? Your hand on my breast bone? Gently steadied to meet your gaze, interminably and for no time at all?
I begin to believe you won't vanish.
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 11:45 AM UTC
I'm tired of written apologies you don't have the guts to speak-
Poets use words and letters and metaphors to explain how they feel
but you, you use a paint by numbers
and it seems to me I've ran out of every color
so now you're just a blank page staring back at me
tempting me to write my own apologies
because I somehow feel bad for you having to say sorry.
These days can become the flat tire on your car on the way to a funeral
but I will always be there to bring you light
even when you take your lack of apologies
and use them to knock out the lights on the ceiling fan-
I will wait in the dark until you decide to change the bulb.
But you never do-
so I'm left there picking up shards of lightbulb
as my hands bleed and spell out your apologies
and I look up at you and ask for help
but it seems you are stuck inside your own mind
your own world until the mess is cleaned up
and the light returns and then I'm stuck here apologizing
for getting blood stains on your t-shirt.
I understand dismay, and the ability to be distraught-
but I don't understand being someone else's peacoat
there to keep you warm until its no longer needed.
I just want to be appreciated.
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 6:53 PM UTC
You stood there, probably cold,
in the frozen foods aisle.
Actually, you had a peacoat on.
When I first saw you,
I only saw your back.
Your hair looked wiry and blonde,
I thought you were aged and frail.
When you turned around with a gallon of milk
your face surprised me.
I was swept up in awe and stared too long.
Your eyes-- blue, kind, and calming--
rested on pillows of roseate cheeks
that looked recently swept by winter winds of New England.
You looked at me, too, but with an austere expression.
I said, "I hope the tempest of your mind
soon finds peaceful resolution in tranquil waters,"
in my head.
She walked past me
her audible rhythmic steps
made with untied,
disheveled
boots.
A beatnik
simply keeping a beat.
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 11:04 PM UTC
I've never worn a peacoat in July,
until today. Today will be the first time
I've ever gotten goosebumps from
open subway windows on a
lightning blue underground.
I'll need a hat too,
anxiety and age has
removed what was left
of my skull cap and if
I don't tend to my head
I'll catch a chill.
Stale summer smell
still lingers in the kitchen air.
From the balcony I see many men,
men walking alongside my
building below in shorts
and tank tops,
pretending they can still feel
fingertip rays from the sun.
But they know it's gone.
For today, maybe the week,
the heat has gone off in search
of a more deserving city
for the time being.
Pretending won't make these men
feel it, but hope keeps
their leg hair raised on point,
similar to the hackles of the runt of the litter
when he snarls for the last piece
of meat in a ***** metal bowl.
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 9:33 AM UTC
Every morning plays over like a silent black-and-white film.
You wake up and somehow you’ve forgotten how to speak.
Your throat feels raw and congested from the disuse of night.
The sunlight strikes your eyelids,
affecting an obliterating blindness,
forcing them apart,
drawing you from the velvety embrace of a dream.
Your feet sink into dirt-smudged sneakers;
they drag across tiles and floors and grains of cement,
across blackened splotches of gum tacked to the streets,
pressing them ever deeper into earth,
into tar.
A young woman in a fitted red pea coat stands near you,
leaning against the steel column by the edge of the tracks.
She is tiny,
her olive skin stretches tight across her bulging cheekbones,
her eyes are pools of grey,
her shoulder-length hair is the color of molasses.
It happens slowly:
the woman in the red pea coat leans further over the ledge,
tilting her head to the side,
searching for life in the roaring darkness.
It happens briefly:
a low rumble beneath your feet,
a glint of light,
a yellow-white rectangle splays across the tracks.
It widens and expands,
oppressing you,
swallowing the woman in the red pea coat,
as she looks up and stares back at the brightness.
The train does not strike her –
it consumes her,
it ***** her up like a vacuum through its sharp metal teeth,
and she vanishes,
or she becomes a refractory beam of light,
or she explodes.
A screech hovers above the crowd,
shrill, high and clear – the rawness of terror.
You cannot help it – you peer into the gap
between the platform and the subway,
absorbing the darkness.
You wonder what moment, precisely,
her life left her body,
or her flailing limbs surrendered to their inevitable consumption.
The paper bag she had been carrying survives,
strayed on the platform,
an afterthought.
Dec 15, 2014
Dec 15, 2014 at 8:39 PM UTC
a walk in the bitter cold just to feel something. on that walk i just might see something beautiful that will make me feel like i did when you were still here. i may see a woman crying, her jet black peacoat throwing a tantrum in the winter wind. her cheeks as cold as the mans heart who caused her this pain. i may know that she will never love again but it won't make me any more sad than i already am. I'm not sure such sadness exists. i may see you walking up from the subway wearing the same hand-me-down coat you covered me in when my walls were crumbling and i was drinking a ****** cup of coffee that i thought would be my last and when you still cared. the sight of you may light my heart on fire and this bitter cold won't be able to freeze me because I'm sweating beads of passionate sweat from the heat you made me feel inside. or i may not see any of this and just feel the twinge of wind hitting my face, like i did last night, and the countless nights before that. after hours of that far too familiar sting, i'll go home and warm up with artificial heat, nothing compared to yours. i'll climb into an empty bed and i'll awake only one or two hours later with an empty mind and heart. then i'll crawl out of bed on an hour of nightmare filled sleep and purposely burn my tongue with coffee just to start off my day with some sort of feeling instead of terrible desolation. all of it just to feel something. just to keep the wraith of you away.
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 4:19 PM UTC
we out run the streetlights at dusk
clicking on overhead
raining urban-orange rays
with the dying day
hang a tight left down the alley
dodging car mirrors and hoses
orions belt preaches purity
hovering above the city
black winter skies
wind riled up
whipping cigarette butts
and plastic cups
leaves stain inky brown corpses
in the stairwell
quickly
please
my hands are gonna freeze
get your keys from your
used peacoat and
shoulder slam the front door
we burrow in the basement
kicking off shoes i collapse on the couch
warmth wine ****
in abundance
my slumping tired shoulders hear
your laughter from the kitchen
and long for you
come caress me gently.
you've waited so patiently
for me and my vials of venom
roaches are trickling in from the ceiling
and i might really love you
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 10:37 PM UTC
Your thick rimmed glasses,
striped sweater, black peacoat,
and white SUV from '98.
It's been over a year,
and I thought I'd never want you back,
but now I see,
I can't find the perfect man,
because I can't have you.
I can't have your intellect,
or your dry humor,
in my life ever again.
Never.
The messages you don't answer.
The songs I will not play,
I cannot play,
that I would play.
Jan 15, 2012
Jan 15, 2012 at 6:38 PM UTC
One more
cigarette
One less thought
captured by my notebook
I know
I have two inner-pockets in my peacoat
One with Silver Sherman's
and one with the little notebook of deeper joys that follow
Yet I've spent more time
Lighting Maduro paper
than sparking ideas
onto trees that are utilized for musings
rather than consumption
I inhale carbon monoxide,
(in line following the crowd -- by choice)
Rather than exhaling the same
for the leaf-lungs of trees
I stretch for something
A dichotomy of Pockets
Paper lined for thoughts
or
Tobacco twined for my subduing
One more, One less
One more circus of circumstance,
One less bridge to nowhere
One more apple to pick,
One less bone
I wonder,
"When the sands of time
should be sifted through my hands
and not my mind?"
But my mind continuously filters,
wondering which grains of now-repurposed stone
amounts to more or less
You fool!
Stop staring at the back of the clock
Discontinue your prescription to madness!
Watch instead the gears turning
not in anxious fear,
but in wondrous awe
Everything: a means to its own end;
not an end to its own means
And yet,
blackened by the smoke,
hardened by the repitition,
you take another drag
And all I can say
is that my throat screams for tea
and my mind
for resolution
One more thought,
One less execution.
--
I know
That if I was self-driven enough
I could compose a chart
(or a melody)
that shows the correlation
between the distance of you
from my thoughts
and the intimacy of nicotine
to my mouth
Feb 7, 2014
Feb 7, 2014 at 4:56 AM UTC
He has sunken,
He is flat!
(He may just be
A bit more fat.)
He may have
Knees of Plasticine
And self-pity like
An entire emo scene...
But this is a new year!
(In mid-May?)
This is when we
Stop the decay.
Let us end
The discontent:
Let us make
Jhonhary great again.
"How do I do it?"
I hear him ask.
Well, here are the steps
To accomplish said task.
One:
Go outside and run
As if first dates were after you.
Go outside and run each day.
You have to.
Two:
Speak a little slower!
You're not a motorboat.
You sound like your tongue
Is wearing a peacoat.
Three:
Shave those sickly
****** hairs away.
You look as appealing as
A plumber's derriere.
Quatro:
Perfecta tu
Francés y español.
Aveces te escuchas
Como muerto caracol.
Five:
Just... chill
With the self-pity.
No manic pixie dream girl
Will come sing you a ditty.
Six:
Learn to play that song
You're just letting stall.
Don't be that guy
That just plays "Wonderwall."
Seven:
Keep buying clothes!
Yes, you look great.
No, don't be alarmed by
Your wallet's lowered weight.
Eight:
Come up with
More steps!
Make fewer jokes that
Leave people perplexed.
Nine:
Keep writing.
This is something you enjoy.
This is where your thoughts can
Come and not be destroyed.
Ten:
Just be you.
Be that well-meaning, uneven guy
Who wants to brighten
Another person's sky.
Eleven:
Make this your
Open-ended answer,
The last step you're
Always going after.
Write these last lines
As you begin your amends.
Make this the poem
That never really ends.
May 18, 2016
May 18, 2016 at 10:18 PM UTC
If at ever, it would be winter
In the middle of still woods
The bleached born settling
A wrought wood/iron savior
Silhouette ambient reeds
mingle stark ska trees,
red beaded berries,
dragon’s secret thistle cove
Heavy overcoat, brown boots,
cute hooded peacoat
One Christmas colored shell
Tidings of comfort and joy
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 2:33 PM UTC
Harry bends over the grill,
beefy with years of drink
and culled anger,
scrubbing until silver shines,
a bullet waiting for my shift.
He believes if the French Toast is perfect,
she will appear in a halo of steam,
peacoat and Mary Janes,
ready to forgive the life they never had.
Outside Brother Juniper’s,
Peachtree Street is a kingdom
of late century's lost:
druggies, rent boys, drag queens,
pimps preaching Jesus
to the homeless in Piedmont Park.
The smell of grease stitches it all together.
Inside, fluorescent light
makes faces soft as wet clay,
ready to be remade by morning.
French fries sizzle like whips,
blintzes bleed cherry onto chipped plates,
and Tati, round as a blessing,
delivers soup to the sobbing girl
whose mascara becomes a confession.
I clock in,
busting knuckles and boots,
young, stupid,
just trying to keep up with him.
I know he wants her to return.
I know she won’t.
I know he’s getting older.
I watch Harry’s grace and sweat,
serving a city that believes
in one last plate of salvation.
At dawn,
he walks out slow, grease still on his arms,
orders a drink he won’t finish,
lets Ray Charles sing him home,
searches the sidewalk
for her red hair in every stranger.
Aug 6, 2025
Aug 6, 2025 at 1:49 PM UTC