"posterboard" poems
Before sleep I knot a paper tag
to my big toe with baling twine.
Sometimes I think of stapling it -
ritual wants a clean edge.
She tolerates my oddities:
a posterboard of errands above the sink,
tea mug with its brown ring I refuse to clean,
I stand too close when the train arrives,
or climb ladders with one hand full.
Last summer a rogue wave flung me under;
I surfaced broken, collarbone split,
came home wrapped and aching.
She kissed the bruise and laughed,
as if I’d slipped the ocean’s grip,
as if the sea had lost its claim.
I call them accidents to sleep easier,
yet I flood the stove with gas,
strike a match, laugh at the plume,
convinced the fire means I’m alive
even as it scorches my hand.
At night she circles the bed,
tugging at my toe tag
as if it could bind me to her,
carrying me into the cabin,
a weight she won’t release.
Sep 20, 2025
Sep 20, 2025 at 1:44 PM UTC
Hippie #73,
she walks like the leopard in the savana of San Francisco, the blonde peacock on the jungle throne
Hippie #73,
a product but a voice, with wings and some uncut claws
Hippie #73,
A nymph and a marcher, with a paintbrush and a posterboard
Hippie #73,
originality is wavy like the rainbow sky, but the lights are bright in the raindrop's shadow
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 10:56 PM UTC
data
all arranged collimated
in neat rows columns
speading sheets all laid out
on rooftops with SOS
written in red paint calling hecilopters
help us it says
water is good unless it inundates
and is ***** with sewage and the government flies by
looking but doesn't do it
before it ends there are accountants
adding tallies costs against lost lives on
a white sheet a
gamma line
going steadily up to the right corner
of a clean paper sheet maybe a posterboard for added
emphasis
etchy red line exponentially rising up up away
in that line are lives against costs the government
sitting on markers
red crayons calculators
basing missions against costs like lives are expendable
how much can we spend for a bunch of creoles or ****** in New Orleans,
someday white folks you gonna be the minority.
I'm
red
I'll rate in the minority
no matter what.
May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018 at 11:27 PM UTC
I wrote a poem once in fine
point pencil that went
unnoticed so I erased it
I wrote my next poem in nib
and ink from a well
and spilled the ink all over it
I next tried to write a poem
on an old fashioned typewriter
because the ribbon was all dried out
it turned out unreadable
So I decided to try posterboard
and a King Sized Sharpie to write upon
my next poem and...
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 8:04 PM UTC