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guy scutellaro Oct 2019
The rain ****** through a darkening sky.

The man's eyes grow bright and he smiles. Softly, he whispers, " Man, you're the biggest, whitest, what hell are you anyway?"

The pup sits up and Jack Delleto caresses her neck, but much to the mutt's chagrin the man stands up and walks away.

Jack has his hand on the door about to go into the bar. The pup issues an interrogatory, "Woof?"

The rain turns to snow.

The man's eyes grow bright and he smiles, "My grandma used to say that when it snows the angels are sweeping heaven. I'll be back for you, Snowflake."

Jack shivers. His smile fading, the night jumps back into his eyes.

Snowflake chuffs once, twice.

The man is gone.



The room would have been a cold, dark place except the bodies who sit on the barstools or stand on the ***** linoleum floor produce heat. The cigarette smoke burns his eyes. Jack Delleto looks down the length of the bar to the boarded shut fire place and although the faces are shadows, he knows them all.

The old man who always sits at the second barstool from the dart board is sitting at the second bar stool. His fist clenched tightly around the beer mug, he stares at his own reflection in the mirror.

The aging barmaid, who often weeps from her apartment window on a hot summer night or a cold winter evening, is coming on to a man half her age. She is going to slip her arm around his bicep at any moment.

"Yeah," Jack smiles, "there she goes."

Jack Delleto knows where the regulars sit night after night clutching the bar with desperation, the wood rail is worn smooth.

In the mirror that runs the length of the bar Jack Delleto sees himself with clarity. Brown hair and brown eyes. Just an ordinary 29 year old man.

"Old Fred is right," he thinks to himself, "If you stare at shadows long enough, they stare back." Jack smiles and the red head returns his smile crossing her long legs that protrude beneath a too short skirt.

The bartender recognizes the man smiling at the redhead.

"Well,  Jack Delleto, Dell, I heard you were dead. " The six foot, two hundred pound bartender tells him as Dell is walking over to the bar.

"Who told you that?"

"Crazy George, while he was swinging from the wagon wheel lamp." Bob O'Malley says as he points to the wagon wheel lamp hanging from the ceiling.

"George, I heard, HE was dead."

The bartender reaches over the bar resting the palms of his big hands on the edge of the bar and flashes a smile of white, uneven teeth. Bob extends his hand. "Where the hell have you been?"

They shake hands.

Dell looks up at the Irishman. "I ve been at Harry's Bar in Venice drinking ****** Marys with Elvis and Ernest."

Bob O'Malley grins, puts two shot glasses on the bar, and reaches under the bar to grab a bottle of bourbon. After filling the glasses with Wild Turkey, he hands one glass to Dell. They touch glasses and throw down the shots.

"Gobble, gobble," O Malley smiles.


The front door of the bar swings open and a cold wind drifts through the bar. Paul Keater takes off his Giants baseball cap and with the back of his hand wipes the snow off of his face.

"Keater," Bob O'Malley calls to the Blackman standing in the doorway.

Keater freezes, his eyes moving side to side in short, quick movements. He points a long slim finger at O'Malley, "I don't owe you any money," Paul Keater shouts.

The people sitting the barstools do not turn to look.

"You're always pulling that **** on me." Keater rushes to the bar, "I PPPAID YOU."

As Delleto watches Keater arguing with O'Malley, the anger grows into the loathing Dell feels for Keater. The suave, sophisticated Paul Keater living in a room above the bar. The man is disgusting. His belly hangs pregnant over his belt. His jeans have fallen exposing the crack of his ***, and Keater just doesn't give a ****. And that ragged, faded, baseball cap, ****, he never takes it off.

When Keater glances down, he realizes he is standing next to Jack Delleto. Usually, Paul Keater would have at least considered punching Delleto in his face. "The **** wasn't any good," Paul feining anger tells O'Malley. "Everybody said it was, ****."

The bartender finishes rinsing a glass in the soapy sink water and then places it on a towel. "*******."

Keater slides the Giant baseball cap back and forth across his flat forehead. "**** it," he turns and storms out of the bar.

"Can I get a beer?" Dell asks but O"Malley is already reaching into the beer box. Twisting the cap off, he puts it on the bar. "It's not that Keater owes me a few bucks, "he tells Dell, "if I didn't cut him off he'd do the stuff until he died." Bob grabs a towel and dries his hands.

"But the smartest rats always get out of the maze first," Jack tells Bob.


Cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and losing lottery tickets litter the linoleum floor. Jack Delleto grabs the bottle of beer off the bar and crosses the specter of unfulfilled wishes.

In the adjacent room he sits at a table next to the pinball machine to watch a disfigured man with an anorexic women shoot pool. Sometimes he listens to them talk, whisper, laugh. Sometimes he just stares at the wall.

"We have a winner, "the pinball machine announces, "come ride the Ferris wheel."



"I'm part Indian. "

Jack looks up from his beer. The Indian has straight black hair that hangs a few inches above her shoulders, a thin face, a cigarette dangling from her too red lips.

"My Mom was one third Souix, " the drunken women tells Jack Delleto.

The Indian exhales smoke from her petite nose waiting for a come on from the man with the sad face. And he just stares, stares at the wall.

Her bushy eyebrows come together forming a delicate frown.

Jack turns to watch a brunette shoot pool. The woman leans over the pool table about to shoot the nine ball into the side pocket. It is an easy shot.

The brunette looks across the pool table at Jack Delleto, "What the **** are you starin at?" She jams the pool stick and miscues. The cue ball runs along the rail and taps the eight ball into the corner pocket. "AH ****," she says.

And Jack smiles.

The Indian thinks Jack is smiling at her, so she sits down.

"In the shadows I couldn't see your eyes," he tells her, "but when you leaned forward to light that cigarette, you have the prettiest green eyes."

She smiles.

" I'm Kathleen," her eyes sparkling like broken glass in an alley.

Delleto tries to speak.

"I don't want to know your name," she tells Jack Delleto, the smile disappearing from her face. "I just want to talk for a few minutes like we're friends," she takes a drag off the cigarette, exhales the smoke across the room.

Jack recognizes the look on her face. Bad dreams.

"I'll be your friend," he tells her.

"We're not going to have ***." The Indian slowly grinds out the cigarette into the ashtray, looks up at the man with the sad face.

"Do you have family?"

"Family?" Delleto gives her a sad smile.

She didn't want an answer and then she gets right into it.

"I met my older sister in Baltimore yesterday." She tells the man with sad eyes.' Hadn't seen her since I was nine, since Mom died. I wanted to know why Dad put me in foster homes. Why?

"She called me Little Sister. I felt nothin. I had so many questions and you know what? I didn't ask one."

Jack is finishing his beer.

"If you knew the reasons, now, what would it matter, anyway."

The man with the black eye just doesn't get it. She lived with them long enough. Long enough to love them.

She stands up, stares at Jack Delleto.

And walks away.


It's the fat blondes turn to shoot pool. She leans her great body ever so gently across the green felt of the pool table, shoots and misses. When she tries to raise herself up off the pool table, the tip of the pool cue hits the Miller Lite sign above the pool table sending the lamb rocking violently back and forth. In flashes of light like the frames from and old Chaplin movie the sad and grotesque appear and disappear.

"What the **** are you starin at?" The skinny brunette asks.

Jack pretends to think for a moment. "An unhappy childhood."

Suddenly, she stands up, looking like death wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt.

"Dove sta amore?" Jack Delleto wonders.

Death is angry, steps closer.

"Must be that time of the month, huh," Jack grins.

With her two tiny fists clenched tightly at her side, the brunette stares down into Delleto's eyes. Suddenly, she punches Jack in the eye.

Jack stands up bringing his forearm up to protect his face. At the same time Death steps closer. His forearm catches her under the chin. The bony ***** goes down.

Women rush from the shadows. They pull Jack to the ***** floor, punch and kick him.

In the blinking of the Miller Light Jack Delleto exclaims," I'm being smother by fat lesbians in soft satin pants."  But then someone is pulling the women off of him.

The Miller Lite gently rocks and then it stops.

Jack stands up, shakes his head and smiles.

"Nice punch, Dell," Bob O' Malley says, "I saw from the bar."

Jack hits the dust off of his pants, grabs the beer bottle off of the table, takes a swallow. Smiling, he says, "I box a little."

"I can tell by your black eye." O'Malley puts his hand on his friends shoulder. "Come on I'll buy you a shot. What caused this spontaneous expression of love?"

"They thought I was a ******."


2 a.m.

Jack Delleto walks out the door of the bar into the wind swept gloom. The gray desolation of boarded shut downtown is gone.

The rain has finally turn to snow.

His eyes follow the blue rope from the parking meter pole to its frayed end buried in the plowed hill of snow at the corner of Cookman Avenue.

The dog, Snowflake, dead, Jack thinks.


The snow covers everything. It covers the abandon cars and the abandon buildings, the sidewalk and its cracks. The city, Delleto imagines, is an adjectiveless word, a book of white pages. He steps off the curb into the gutter and the street is empty for as far as he can see. He starts walking.

Jack disappears into empty pages.


Chapter 2


Paul Keater has a room above Wagon Wheel Bar where the loud rock music shakes the rats in the walls til 2a.m. The vibrations travel through the concrete floor, up the bed posts, and into the matress.

Slowly Paul's eyes open. Who the hell is he fooling. Even without the loud music, he would not be able to sleep, anyway.

Soft red neon from the Wagon Wheel Bar sign blinks into his room.

Paul Keater sits up, sighs, resigns himself to another sleepless night, swings his legs off the bed. His x-wife. He thinks about her frequently. He went to a phycologist because he loved her.

Dump the *****, the doctor said.

"I paid him eighty bucks and all he had to say was dump the *****." He laughs, shakes his head.

Paul thinks about *******, looks around the tiny room, and spots a clear plastic case containing the baseball cards he had collected when he was a boy.

He walks to the dresser and puts on his Giant's baseball cap. Paul sits down on the wooden chair by the sink. Turns on the lamp. The card on top is ***** Mays. Holding it in his hand, it is perfect. The edges are not worn like the other cards.

It was his tenth birthday and his dad had taken him to his first baseball game and his father had bought the card from a dealer.

Oblivious to the loud rock music filtering into his room, he stares at the card.

Fondly, he remembers.

Dad.


                                     *     

It arrives unobtrusively. His heart begins to race faster.
Jack Delleto rolls away from the cracked wall. He sits up and drops his legs off the bed.

Jack Delleto thinks about mountains.

When he cannot sleep he thinks about climbing up through the fog that makes the day obscure, passing where the stunted spruce and fir tees are twisted by the wind, into cold brilliant light. Once as he climbed through the fog he saw his shadow stretching a half a mile across a cloud and the world was small. Far down to the east laid cliffs and gullies, glaciated mountains and to the west were the plains and cities of everyday life.

The army coat is draped over the back of the chair. In the pocket is his notebook. Jack stands and takes the notebook from the pocket. When he sits in the wooden chair he opens the book and slides the pen from the binder.

When he finishes his story he makes the end into the beginning.



                                           Chapter 3


"I want a captain in a truck." The 10 year old boy with the brown hair tells his mom. "I want it NOW."

His blonde haired mom wearing the gold diamond bracelet nods her head at Jack Delleto. Jack looks up at the clock on the wall. It is only 9a.m. After four years of college Jack has a part time job at K.B. Toy store. "We're all out of them," he tells her for the second time.

"Honey," Blondie tells her boy, "they're all out of them."

"YOU PROMISED."

"How about a sargeant in a jeep?

"OK, but I want a missile firing truck , too."

Delleto turns to the display case behind the counter. Briefly, he studies his black eye in the display case mirror and then begins searching the four shelves and twenty rows of 3 inch plastic toys. He finds the truck. His head is aching. He finds the truck and puts it on the counter in front of the boy.

"Sorry, we're all out of the sargeant," Jack tells the pretty lady. The aching in his head just won't go away.

"Mommy, mommy, I want an ATTACK HELIOCOPTER, MOMMMEEE, I WANTAH TTTAAANNNK..."

Jack Delleto leans over the counter resting his elbows on the glass top. The boy is staring at the man with the black eye, at his bruised, unshaven face.

"Well, we haven't got any, GODDAMED TANKS. How about a , KICKINTHE ***."

Finally the boy and his mother are quiet.

"My husband will have you fired."

She grabs the boy by the hand. Turns to rush out of the store.

Jack mutters something.

"MMOOOMEEE,  what does..."

"Oh, shut the hell up," the pretty lady tells her son


                              
     

The assistant manager takes a deep drag on her cigarette, exhales, and crosses her arms to hold the cigarette in front of her. Susan looks down at Jack sitting on the stool behind the counter. He stands up. "Did you tell some lady to blow you?" She crushes the cigarette out in the ashtray on the shelf below the counter. "Maybe you don't need this job but I do."

"Sue, there's no smoking in the mall."

"Jack, you look tired," the cubby teenager tells him, "and your eye. Another black eye."

"I was attacked by five women."

'Oh, I see, in your dreams maybe. I see, it's one of those male fantasies I'm always reading about in Cosmo. You're not boxing again, are you Dell?" Sue likes to call him Dell.

"I go down to the gym to work out. Felix says I've got something."

"Yeah, a black eye." Susan laughs, opens the big vanilla envelope, and hands Jack his check.

She turns and takes a pair of sunglasses from the display stand. "You 're scaring the children, Dell ." Susan steps closer looks into Dell's brown eyes and the slips the sunglasses on his face. "Why don't you go to lunch."

                                        
     

It's noon and the mall is crowded at the food court area. Jack gets a 20oz cup of coffee, finds a table and sits down.

"Go over and talk to him. " Susan says. Jack turns his head , looks back, sees the Indian walking towards his table.

"Hello, Kathrine," says Jack Delleto.

"My names not Kathrine, it's Kathleen."

Jack pulls the chair away from the table, "Have a seat Kate."

Her eyebrows form that delicate frown. "My names Kathleen." As soon as she sits down she takes a cigarette from the pack sticking out of her pocketbook. "I had to leave. I told the baby sitter I'd only be gone an hour. Anyway you weren't much help."

"So why did you come over to talk to me?"

"You were alone, the bar full of people and you're alone. Why?"

"I like it that way. You've seen me there before?"

"Yeah, sitting by the pin ball machine staring at the wall, and sometimes, you'd take out your blue note pad and write in it.
What do you write about?  Are you goin to write about me..."

"Maybe. How many kids do you have?"

"Just one. A boy, and believe me one is enough. He'll be four in June," Kathleen smiles but then she remembers and abruptly the smile disappears from her face. "Sometimes I see Anthony's father in the mall and I ask him if he'd like to meet his son, but he doesn't.

Kathleen draws the cigarette smoke deep into her lungs, tilts her head back, and blows the smoke towards the skylight. Suddenly caught in the sunlight the smoke becomes a gray cloud. " I didn't want to marry him anyway, I don't know why he thought that."

She hears the scars as Delleto talks, something sad about the man, something like old newspapers blowing across a deserted street. She hears the scars and knows never, never ask where the scars came from.


                              
     

As Jack walks towards the bank to cash his check, he glances out the front entrance to the mall. It is a bright, cold day and the snowplows are finishing up the parking lot plowing the snow into big white hills. That is the fate of the big white pup plowed to the corner of Cookman and Main buried deep in ***** snow. At that street corner when the school is over the children will play on the hill never realizing what lay beneath there feet.

The snow must melt; spring is inevitable.

His pup will be back.



                                           Chapter 4


The 19 year old light heavyweight leans his muscular body forward to rest his gloved hands on the tope rope of the ring. He bows his head waiting to regain his breath as his lungs fight to force air deep into his chest. Bill Wain has finished boxing 4 rounds with Red.

Harry the trainer, gently pulls the untied boxing gloves from Red's hands. "Good fight, he says, patting Red on the back as the fighter climbs through the ropes and heads to the showers. Harry hands the sweat soaked gloves to Felix who puts one glove under his arm while he loosens the laces on the other 12ounce glove. He makes the sleeve wider.

"Do you want the head gear?" Felix asks.

Jack Delleto shakes his head and pushes his taped hand deep into the glove.

The old man takes the other glove from under his arm, pulls the laces out, and holds it open. Without turning his head to look at him, Felix tells Harry, "Make sure Bill doesn't cool down. Tell him to shadow box. Harry walks over to Bill and Bill starts shadow boxing.

Jack pushes his hand into the glove. "Make a fist." Jack does. Felix pulls the laces and ties it into a bow.

Felix looks intently into Delleto's eyes. "How does that feel?"

"About right."

"You look tired."

"I am a little."

"Are you sick or is it a woman."

"I'm not sick."

A big smile forms across the face of the former welterweight champion of Nevada. The face of the 68 year old Blackman is lined and cracked like the old boxing gloves that Jack is wearing but his tall body is youthful and athletic in appearance. Above Felix's eyebrows Jack sees the effect of 20 years as a professional fighter. He sees the thick scar tissue and the thin white lines where the old man's skin has been stitched and re-stitched many times. As he gives instructions to Jack, Felix's brown eyes seem to be staring at something distant and Jack wonders if Felix has chased around the ring one time too often his dream.

"And get off first. Don't stop punching until he goes down. You've got it kid and not every fighter does."

Jack and Felix start walking over to the ring.

"What is it I've got?" Jack Deletto wonders.

Felix puts his foot on the fourth strand of the rings rope and with his hand pulls up the top strand and as Jack steps into the ring, "You've got, HEART."

In the opposite corner Bill Wain waits.

"Will he be alright?" Harry asks.

"Bill's tired, " Felix replies, then he tries to explain. "It's not about money. I'm almost 70 and I want to go out a winner." Felix pauses and the offers, he can hit hard with either hand."

"Yeah, but at best he's a small middleweight and he only moves in one direction, straight ahead."

"Harry, I love the guy," Felix puts his hand on Harry's shoulder, he's like Tyson at the end of his career. He'd fight you to the death but he's not fighting to win anymore."

Harry puts his hands in his pocket and stares at the floor. "Do you want me to tell him to go easy." Harry looks up at Felix waiting for an answer.

"I'm tired of sweeping dirt from behind the boxes of wax beans and tuna fish. I'm sick of collecting shopping carts in the rain. A half way decent white heavyweight can make a lot of money. It's stupid for a fighter to practice holding back. Bill's a winner. Jack'll be alright."

Felix hands the pocket watch to Harry so he can time the rounds.

Bill Wain comes out of his corner circling left.

Jack rushes straight ahead.

Felix winks at Jack Delleto and whispers, "The Jack of hearts."



                                           Chapter 5


The front door of the Wagon Wheel bar explodes open to Ziggy Pop's, "YOU'VE GOT A LUST FOR LIFE." Jack Delleto steps over the curb and vanishes into the dark doorway.

"HEY, JACK, JACK DELLETO," The lanky bartender shouts over the din.

Delleto makes his way through the crowd over to bar. How the hell have you been Snake?" Jack asks.

"Just great," says Snake. "You're lookin pretty ****** good for a dead man."

"Who told you that? Crazy George?"

The bartender points across the room to where a man in a pin stripe suit is swinging to and fro from a wagon wheel lamp attached to the ceiling.

"Yeah, I thought so. Haven't seen Crazy George in a year and he's been telling everyone I'm dead. I'm gonna have to have a long talk with that man."

Snake hands Jack a shot of tequila. The men touch glasses and throw down the shots.

How's the other George? Dell asks.

"AA."

"How's Tommy? You see him anymore?"

"Rehab."

"What about Robbie?"

Snake refills the glasses. "He's livin in a nudist colony in Florida, he has two wives and 6 children."


Jack looks across the room and sees Bob O'Malley trying to adjust the rose in the lapel of his tuxedo. Satisfied it won't fall out O'Malley looks up at the man swinging from the lamp. "Quick, name man's three greatest inventions."

"Alcohol, tobacco, and the wheel," Crazy George shoots back.

O'Malley smiles and then jumps up on the top of the bar and although he is over six feet and weighs two hundred pounds, he has the dexterity and grace of a ballerina as he pirouttes around and jumps over the shot glasses and beer bottles that litter the bar.

Wedding guests lean back in their chairs as strangers fearful of his gyrations ****** their drinks off the bar. Bob fakes a slip as he prances along but he is always in control and never falters. Forty three year old Bob O'Malley is Jim Brown who dodges danger to score the winning touch down.

When Bob reaches the end of the bar he jumps to the floor, pulls two aluminum lids from the beer box, and with one in each hand he smacks them together like cymbals.

Some guests clap. The bemused just stare.

In the back of the room sitting at the wedding table the father of the bride leans over, whispers into the ear of his crying wife, "If I had a gun I'd shoot Bob."

The bride raises a glass of champagne into the smoke filled air and Bob takes a bow but then heads towards the kitchen at the other end of the room.

" Hey, Bob," Jack Delleto shouts to the groom.

O'Malley stops under the wagon wheel lamp and turns as Delleto steps into the  circle of light cast onto the floor.

"Congratulations, I know Theresa and you are goin to be happy. I mean that." Delleto offers his hand and they shake hands.

"Thanks, Mr. Cool."

Jack takes off the sunglasses.

"TWO black eyes. Your nose is bleeding. What happened?"

Dell takes the handkerchief from his back pocket, wipes the blood dripping down his face. "It's broken."

"What happened?" O'Malley asks again.

"Bill Wain."

"He turned pro."

"Yeah, but he's nothing special. Hell, he couldn't even knock me down."

O'Malley shakes his head. "Dell, why do you do it? You always lose."

"If you don't fight you've already lost."

"Put the sunglasses back on, you look like a friggin raccoon."

Dell smiles. The blood running down his lips."Thersa's beautiful, Bob, you're a lucky guy."

"Thanks Dell." O'Malley puts his hand on Dell's shoulder and squeezes affectionately. Bob looks across the room at Theresa. "Yeah, she is beautiful." Theresa's mother has stopped crying. Her father drinks whiskey and stares at the wall.

O'Malley looks away from his bride and passed the archway that divides the poolroom from the bar and into the corner. With the lamp light above his head gleaming in his eyes Bob seems to see a ghost fleeting in the far distant, dark corner. Slowly, a peculiar half smile forms uneven, white, tombstone teeth.  A pensive smile.

Curious, Dell turns his head to look into the darkness of the poolroom, too.

At night in July the moths were everywhere. When Dell was a boy he would sit on his porch and try to count them. The moths appeared as faint splashes of whiteness scattered throughout the nighttime sky, odd circles of white that moved haphazardly, forward and then sideways, sometimes up and then down.

Sometimes the patches of moths flew higher and higher and Dell imagined the lights those creatures were seeking were the stars themselves; Orion, the Big Dipper, and even the milky hue of the Milkyway.

One night as the moths pursued starlight he saw shadows dropping one by one from the branches at the tops of the trees. The swallows were soundless and when he caught a glimpse of sudden darkness, blacker than the night, he knew the shadows had erased the dreamer and its dream.

His imagination gave definition to form. There was a sound to the shadows of the swallows in his thoughts, the melody and the song played over and over. Wings of shadow furled and unfurled. Perhaps he saw his reflection in the night. Perhaps there are shadows where nothing exists to cast them.

"Do you hear them, Bob?"

"Hear what?" Bob asks.

"All of them."

"All of what?"

"Shadows," Delleto candidly tells his friend, then, "Ah, Nothin."

O'Malley doesn't understand but it does not matter. The two men have shared the same corner of darkness.

Bob calls to Paul Keater. Keater smiles broadly, slides the brim of his Giant baseball cap to the side of his forehead. The two men disappear through the swinging kitchen door.


                                          Chapter 6


"Hello Kate." Jack Delleto says and sits down. She has a blue bow in her hair and make up on.

"My names Kathleen."

She fondles the whiskey glass in her slim fingers. "Hello, Dell, Sue thinks Dell is such a **** name. Kathleen takes a last drag on her cigarette, rubs it out in the ashtray, looks up at him, "What should I call you?"

"How about, Darlin?"

"Hello, Jack, DARLIN," her soft, deep voice whispers. Kathleen crosses her legs and the black dress rides up to the middle of her thigh.

Jack glances at the milky white flesh between the blue ***** hose and the hem of her dress. Kate is drunk and Dell does not care. He leans closer, "Do you wanna dance?"

"But no one else is dancing."

"Well, we can go down to the beach, take a walk along the sand."

"It's twenty degrees out there."

"I'll keep you warm."

"All right, lets dance."

Jack stands up takes her by the hand. As Kathleen rises Jack draws her close to him. Her ******* flatten against his chest. He feels her heart thumping.

The Elvis impersonator that almost played Las Vegas; the hairdresser that wanted to be a race car driver; the insurance salesman with a Porche and a wife.  Her men talked about what they owned or what they could do well.

And Kathleen was impressed.

But Dell wasn't like them. Dell never talked about himself. Did he have a dream? Was there something he wanted more than anything?

Kathleen had never meant anyone quite like Dell.

She rests her head on his shoulder. "What do you what more than anything? What do you dream about at night?"

"Nothing."

"Come on," she says," what do you want more than anything? Tell me your dreams."

Jack smiles, "Just to make it through another day."  He smiles that sad smile that she saw the first time they met. "Tell me what you want."

Kate lifts her head off of his shoulder and looks into his eyes. "I don't want to be on welfare the rest of my life and I want to be able to send my son to college." She rests her cheek against his, "I've lived in foster homes all my life and every time I knew that one day I'd have to leave, what I want most is a home. Do you know the difference between a house and a home?"

"No. not at all"

Her voice is a roaring whisper in his ear, "LOVE."

The song comes to an end and they leave the circle of light and sit down. Kate takes a cigarette from the pack.

Dell strikes a match. The flame flickering in her eyes. "Maybe someday you'll have your home."

"Do you want me to?"

"Yeah."

Kate blows out the match.


                                  
     


"Can you take me home?" Kate asks slurring her words.

Kathleen and Jack walk over to where the bride and groom are standing near the big glass refrigerator door with Paul Keater. When Paul realizes he is standing next to Jack Delleto he rocks back and forth on the heals of his worn shoes, slides his Giants baseball cap back and forth across his forehead and walks away.

O'Malley bends down and kisses Kathleen on the cheek and turns to shake hands with Dell. "Good luck," says Dell. Kathleen embraces the bride.

Outside the bar the sun is setting behind the boarded shut Delleto store.

"That was my Dad's store, " Jack tells Kate and then Jack whispers to to himself as he reads the graffiti spray painted on the front wall.
"TELL YOUR DREAMS TO ME, TELL ME YOU LOVE ME, IF YOU LOVE ME, TELL ALL YOUR DREAMS TO ME."


                                         Chapter 7


An old man comes shuffling down the street, "Hello Mr. Martin, " Jack says, "How are you?"

"I'm an old man Jack, how could I be," and then he smiles, "ah, I can't complain. How are you?"

"Still alive and well."

"Who is this pretty young lady?"

"This is Kate."

Joesph Martin takes Kathleen by the arm and gently squeezes, "Hello Kate, such a pretty women, ah, if I was only sixty," and the old man smiles.

Kathleen forces a smile.

The thick eyeglasses that Mr. Martin wears magnifies his eyes as he looks from Kathleen to Jack, "Have fun now, because when you're dead, you're going to be dead a long, long time." And Martin smiles.

"How long?  Delleto inquires.

The old man smirks and waves as he continues up the street to the door leading to the rooms above the bar. He turns to face the door. The small window is broken and the shards of glass catch the twilight.

Joesph Martin turns back looking at the man and young woman who are about to get into the car. He is not certain what he wants to say to them. Perhaps he wants to tell them that it ***** being an old man and the upstairs hallway always smells of ****.

Joesph Martin wants to tell someone that although Anna died seven years ago his love endures and he misses her everyday. Joesph recalls that Plato in Tamaeus believed that the soul is a stranger to the Earth and has fallen into matter because of sin.

A faint smile appears on the wrinkled face of the old man as he heeds the resignation he hears in his own thoughts.

Jack waves to Mr. Martin.  Joesph waves back. The mustang drives off.

Earth, O island Earth.


                                               Chapter 8


Joseph pushes open the door and goes into the hallway. The fragments of glass scattered across the foyer crunch and clink under his shoes. The cold wind blowing through the broken window touches his warm neck. He shivers and walks up the stairs. There is only enough light to see the wall and his own warm breathing. There is just enough light like when he has awaken from a  bad dream, enough to remember who he is and to separate the horror of what is real from the horror of what is dreamt.

The old man continues climbing the stairs following the familiar shadow of the wall cast onto the stairs. If he crosses the vague line of shadow and light he will disappear like a brown trout in the deepest hole in a creek.

By the time he reaches the second floor he is out of breath. Joseph pauses and with the handkerchief he has taken from his back pocket he wipes the fog from the lenses of his eyeglasses and the sweat from his forehead.

A couple of doors are standing open and the old man looks cautiously into each room as he hurries passed. One forty watt bulb hangs from a frayed wire in the center of the hallway. The wiring is old and the bulb in the white porcelain socket flickers like the blinking of an eye or the fearful beating of the heart of an old man.

When he opens the door to his room it sags on ruined hinges.

Joesph searches with his hand for the light switch.  Several seconds linger. Can't find it.

Finds it and quickly pushes the door shut. He sits down on the bed, doesn't take his coat off, reaches for the radio. It is gone.

Joseph looks around the room. A small dresser, the sink with a mirror above it. He takes off his coat and above the mirror hangs the coat on the nail he has put there.

Hard soled boots echo hollowly off the hallway walls. The echoes are overlapping and he cannot determine if the footsteps are leaving or approaching.

The crowbar is under his pillow.

He grabs it. Holds it until there is silence.

He lays back on the bed. Another night without sleep. Joseph rolls onto his side and faces the wall.

Earth, O island Earth.



                                           Chapter 9


Tangled in the tree tops a rising moon hangs above the roofs of identical Cape Cod houses.

Jack pulls the red mustang behind a station wagon. Kathleen is looking at Dell. His face is a faint shadow on the other side of the car. "Do you want to come up?" she asks.

Kathleen steps out of the car, breathes the cold air deep into her lungs. It is fresh and sweet. Jack comes around the side of the car just as she knew he would. He takes her into his arms. She can feel his lips on hers and his warm breath as the kiss ends.

They walk beneath the old oak tree and the roots have raised and crack the sidewalk and in the spring tiny blue flowers will bloom. The flowers remind Jack of the columbines that bloom in high mountain meadows above tree line heralding a brief season of sun and warmth.

"Did you win?" Kathleen asks as she fits the key into the upstairs apartment door. The door swings open into the brightly lit kitchen.

Dell, leaning in the doorway, two black eyes, looking like the Jack of Hearts. "It doesn't matter."

"You lost?"

"Yeah."

Crossing the room she takes off her coat and places it on the back of the kitchen chair. When Kate leans across the kitchen table to turn on the radio the mini dress rides up her thigh, tugs tightly around her buttocks.

The radio plays softly.

Jack stands and as Kathleen turns he slips his arms around her waist and she is staring into his eyes like a cat into a fire. His body gently presses against the table and when he lifts her onto the table her legs wrap around his waist.

Kathleen sighs.

Jack kisses her. Her lips are cold like the rain. His hand reaches. There is a faint click. The room slips into darkness. It is Eddie Money on the radio, now, with Ronnie Specter singing the back up vocals. Eddie belts out, "TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT, I WON"T LET YOU LEAVE TIL..."

When Jack withdraws from the kiss her eyes are shining like diamonds in moonlight.

The buttons of her dress are unfastened.  Her arms circle his neck and pull him to her *******. "Don't Jack. You mustn't. I just want a friend."

His hands slide up her thighs. "I'll be your friend, " says Jack.

Her voice is a roaring whisper in his ear. "*** always ruins everything," He pulls her to the edge of the table as Ronnie sings, "O DARLIN, O MY DARLIN, WON'T YOU BE MY LITTLE BAABBBY NOOWWW."


They are sitting on a couch in the room that at one time had been a sun porch.

Now that they have gotten *** out of the way, maybe they can talk. Sliding her hands around his face she pulls him closer.

"Jack, what do you dream about? You know what I mean, tell your dreams to me."

"How did you get those round scars on your arm?" Dell wonders.

"Don't ask. I don't talk about it. Do you have family?"

"Yeah. A brother. Tell me about those scars."

My ****** foster dad. He burned me with his cigarette. That's how I got these ****** scars.

And when I knew he was coming home, I'd get sick to my stomach, and when I heard his key in the door, I'd *** myself. And I got a beating.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

When they didn't beat me or burn me, they ignored me, like I didn't exist, like I wasn't even there. And you know what, I didn't hate him. I hated my father who put in all those foster homes."



                                             Chapter 10



Spring. All the windows in the apartment are open. The cool breeze flows through her brown hair. "You're getting too serious, Jack, and I don't want to need you."

"That's because I care for you."

The rain pounds the roof.

Jack Delleto sits down on the bed, caresses her shoulder. "I hate the rain. Come on, give me a smile. "Kathleen pulls away and faces the wall.

"Well, I don't need anyone."

"People need people."

"Yeah, but I don't need you." There is silence, then, "I only care about my son and Father Anthony."

"What is it with you and the priest?" You named your son Anthony is that because he's the father."

"You're an *******. Get out of here. I don't love you." And then, "I've been hurt by people and you'll get over it."

Then silence. Jack gets up from the bed, stares at her dark form facing the wall. "Isn't this how it always ends for you?"

The room is quiet and grows hot. When the silence numbs his racing heart, he goes into the kitchen, opens the front door and walks down the steps into the cold rain.


"Anthony," Kathleen calls to her son to come to her from the other bedroom and he climbs into the bed, and she holds him close. The ghost of relationships past haunt her and although they are all sad, she clings to them.


On the sidewalk below the apartment window Jack stops. He thinks he hears his name being called but whatever he has heard is carried off by the wind. He continues up the dark street to his Harley.

High in reach less branches of the old oak tree a mockingbird is singing. The leaves twist in the wind and the singing goes on and on.



                                            
     



The ringing phone. The clock on the dresser says 5 a.m.

"Who the hell is this?"

"Jack, I'm scared."

"Kate? Is that you?"

"Someone broke into my apartment."

"Is he still there?"

"No, he ran out the door when I screamed. It was hot and I had the window open. He slit the screen."

"I'll be right over."



                                         Chapter11


"How hot is it?" Kathleen asks.

The bar is empty except for O'Malley, Keater, a man and a woman.

"98.6," says Jack. The sweat rolls down his cheeks.

"Let's go to the boardwalk."

"When it's hot like this, it's hot all over."

"We could go on the rides."

"I've got the next pool game, then we'll go."

"It's my birthday."

"I bought you flowers."

"Yeah, carnations."

Laughing, Paul Keater slides the brim of his baseball cap back and forth across his forehead.

Jack eyes narrow. He starts for Keater, Katheen steps in front of Jack, puts her hands on his shoulders. She looks into his eyes.

"Who are you Jack Delletto? What is it with you two? But as always you'll say nothing, nothing." As Jack tries to speak she walks over to the bar and sits on the barstool.

"It's my birthday," she tells O'Malley.

When Bob turns from the horse races on the T.V., he notices her long legs and the short skirt. "Hey, happy birthday, Kate, Jack Daniels?"

"Fine."

Filling the glasses O'Malley hands one to Kathleen, "You look great," he tells her.

"Jack doesn't think so. Thanks, at least someone thinks so."

"Hope Jack won't mind," and he leans over the bar and kisses her.

Kathleen looks over her shoulder at Delleto. Jack is playing pool with a woman wearing a black tight halter top. The woman comes over to Jack, stands too close, smiles, and Jack smiles back.

The boyfriend stares angrily at Jack.

When Kathleen turns back O'Malley is filling her shot glass.

Jack wins that game, too.



                                                 Chapter 12



"Daddy," the little girl with her hands folded in her lap is looking up at her father. "When will the ride stop? I want to go on."

"Soon, Darling, "her father assures her.

"I don't think it will ever stop."

"The ride always stops, Sweetie." Daddy takes her by the hand, gently squeezes.


When the carousel begins to slow down but has not quite stopped Kathleen steps onto the platform, grabs the brass support pole. The momentum of the machine grabs her with a **** onto the ride, into a white horse with big blue eyes. Dropping her cigarette she takes hold of the pole that goes through the center of the horse. She struggles to put her foot in the stirrup, finds it, and throws her leg over the horse. The carousel music begins to play. With a tremble and a jolt, the ride starts.

Sitting on the pony has made her skirt ride well up her legs. The ticket man is staring at her but she is too drunk to care. She hands him the ticket, gives him the finger.

The ticket man goes over to the little girl and her father who are sitting in a golden chariot pulled by to black horses.

"Ooooh, Daddy, I love this."

"So do I," The father smiles and strokes his daughter's hair.

The heat makes the dizziness grow and as the ride picks up speed she sees two of everything. There are two rows of pin ball machines, eight flashing signs, six prize machines. All the red, blue and green lights from the ride blend together like when a car drives at night down a rain-soaked street.

Kathleen feels the impulse to *****.

"Can we go on again?" The little girl asks.

"But the ride isn't over, yet."


Kathleen concentrates on the rain-soaked street and the dizziness and nausea lessens. She perceives the images as a montage like the elements that make up a painting or a life. She has become accustom to the machine and its movement. The circling ride creates a cooling breeze that becomes a tranquil, flowing waterfall.

The ponies in front are always becoming the ponies in the back and the ponies in back are becoming the ponies in the front. Around and around. All the ponies galloping. Settling back into the saddle she rides the pony into the ever-present receding waterfall.

You can lose all sense of the clock staring into the waterfall of blue, red and green. Kathleen leans forward to embrace the ride for a long as it lasts.

Just as suddenly as it started, the ride is slowly stopping, the music stops playing.

Coming down off the pony she does not wait for the ride to stop, stumbles off the platform and out the Casino amusement park door. "****, *******," she yells careening into the railing almost falling into Wesley Lake.

She staggers a few steps, sits down on the grass by the curb, hears the carousel music playing and knows the ride is beginning again, and all of her dreams crawls into her like a dying animal from its hidden hole.

And it all comes up from her throat taking her breath away. A distant yet familiar wind so she lies down on the grass facing the street of broken buildings filled with broken people. From the emptying lot of scattering thoughts the mockingbird is singing and the images shoot off into a darkening landscape, exploding, illuminating for a brief moment, only to grow dimmer, light and warmth fading into cold and darkness.




                                      
     

"Your girlfriend is flirting with me," Jack Delleto tells the man. "It's my game."

The man stands up, takes a pool stick from the rack, as he comes towards Jack Delleto the man turns the pool stick around holding the heavy part with two hands.

There is an explosion of light inside his head, Delleto sees two spinning lizards playing trumpets, 3 dwarfs with purple hair running to and fro, intuitively he knows he has to get up off the floor, and when he does he catches the bigger man with a left hook, throws the overhand right. The man stumbles back.

His girlfriend in the tight black halter top is jumping up and down, screaming at, screaming at Jack Delleto to stop, but Jack, does not. Stepping forward, a left hook to the midsection, hook to the head, spins right, throws the overhand right.

The man goes down. Jack looks at him.

"You lose, I win," and Delleto's smile is a sad, knowing one.



                                                  CHAPTER­ 13

"It's too much," and Jack looks up from the two lines of white powder at Bob O'Malley. "I'll never be able to fall asleep and I hate not being able to sleep."

" Here," Bob takes a big white pill from his shirt pocket.

Jack drops the pill into his shirt pocket and says, "No more." He hands the rolled-up dollar bill to Bob who bends over the powder.

"Tom sold the house so you're upstairs? O Malley asks, and like a magician the two lines of white powder disappear.

"Till i find another place," Jack whispers.

Straightening up, O'Malley looks at Dell, "I know you 're hurting Dell, I'm sorry, I'm sad about Kate, too."

"Kate had a kid. A boy, four years old."

Jack becomes quiet, walks through the darkened room over to the bar. Leaning over the bar he grabs two shot glasses and a bottle of Wild Turkey, walks back into the poolroom. He puts the shot glasses on top of the pin ball machine. "We have a winner, " the pin ball machine announces. Dell fills the glasses.

"Felix came in the other day, he's taken it hard," Bob tells him.
Bill Wain knock down four times in the sixth round, he lost consciousness in the dressing room, and died at the hospital."

"I heard. What's the longest you went without sleep? Jack asks.

"Oooohhh, five, six days, who knows, after awhile you lose all track of time."

They take the shots and throw them down.

"I wonder if animals dream," Jack wants to know. "I wonder if dogs dream."

"Sure, they do, " O'Malley assures him, nodding his head up and down, "dogs, cats, squirrels, birds."

"Probably not insects."

"Why not? June bugs, fleas, even moths, it's all biochemical, dreams are biochemical, mix the right combination of certain chemicals, electric impulses, and you'll produce love and dreams."

                                          
     

Jack Delleto goes into his room above the bar, studies it. The light from the unshaded lamp on the nightstand casts a huge shadow of him onto the adjacent wall. Not much to the room, a sink with a mirror above it next to a dresser, a bed against the wall, a wooden chair in front of a narrow window.

The rain pounds the roof.

The apprehension grows. The panic turns into anger. Jack rushes the white wall, meets his shadow, explodes with a left hook. He throws the right uppercut, the overhand right, three left hooks. He punches the wall and his knuckles bleed. He punches and kicks the blood-stained wall.

At last exhausted, he collapses into the chair in front of the open window. Fist sized holes in the plaster revel the bones of the building. The room has been punched and kicked without mercy.

The austere room has won.

The yellow note pad, he needs the yellow note pad, finds it, takes the pencil from the binder but no words will come so he writes, "insomnia, the absence of dream." He reaches for the lamp on the nightstand, finds it, and turns off the light. Red and blue, blue and red, the neon from the Wagon Wheel Bar sign blinks soft neon into his room. The sign seems to pulsate to the cadence of the rock music coming from the bar.

Taking the big white pill from his shirt pocket, he swallows it, leans back into the chair watching the shadows of rain bleed down the wall. The darkness intensifies. Jack slides into the night.



                                           Chapter 14


The rain turns to snow.

With each step he takes the pain throbs in his arm and shoulder socket. His raw throat aches from the drafts of cold air he is ******* through his gaping mouth and although his legs ache he does not turn to look back. Jack must keep punching holes with his ice axe, probing the snow to avoid a fall into an abyss.

The pole of the ice axe falls effortlessly into the snow, "**** it, another one."

Moonlight coats the glacier in an irridecent glow and the mountain looms over him. It is four in the mourning and Jack knows he needs to be high on the mountain before the mourning sun softens the snow. He moves carefully, quietly, humbly to avoid a fall into a crevasse. When he reaches the top of the couloir the wind begins to howl.

"DA DA DUN, DA DA DUN, HEY PURPLE HAZE ALL AROUND MY BRAIN..."

Jack thinks the song is in his head but the electric guitar notes float down through the huge blocks of ice that litter the glacier and there standing on the arête is Jimi, his long dexterous fingers flying over the guitar strings at 741 mph.

"Wait a minute, " Jack wonders, stopping dead in his tracks. The sun is hitting the distant, wind-blown peaks. "Ah, what the hell," and Jack jumps in strumming his ice axe like an air guitar, singing, shouting, "LATELY THINGS DON'T SEEM THE SAME, IS THIS A DREAM, WHATEVER IT IS THAT GIRL PUT A SPELL ON MEEEE, PURRPPLLE HAZZEEE."


                                        
     


Slowly the door moans open.

"Jack, are you awake?" her voice startles him.

"Yeah, I'm awake."

"What's the matter, can't sleep?"

Jack sifts position on the chair. "Oh, I can sleep all right." He recognizes the voice of the shadow. "I want to climb to a high mountain through ice and snow and never be found."

"A heart that's empty hurts, I miss you, Jack Delleto."

"I'm glad someone does, I miss you, too, Kate."

There is silence for several minutes and the voice comes out of the darkness again.

"Jack, you forgot something that night."

"What?" The dark shape moves towards him. When it is in front of him, Jack stands, slips his arms around her waist.

"You didn't kiss me goodbye."

Her lips are soft and warm. Her arms tighten around his neck and the warmth of her body comes to him through the cold night.

"Jack, what's the matter?" She raises her head to look at him, "Why, you're crying."

"Yeah, I'm crying."

"Don't cry Darlin," her lips are soft against his ear. "I can't bear to see you unhappy, if you love me, tell me you love me."

"I love you, I do," he whispers softly.

"Hold me, Jack, hold me tighter."

"I'll never let you go." He tries to hug the shadow.


                                          
      *


The dread grows into an explosion of consciousness. Suddenly, he sits up ******* in the cold drafts of air coming into the room from the open window. Jack Delleto gets up off the chair and walks over to the sink. He turns on the cold water and bending forward splashes water onto his face. Water dripping, he leans against the sink, staring into the mirror, into his eyes that lately seem alien to him.



                                            Chapter 15


Someone approaches, Jacks turns, looks out the open door, sees Joesph Martin go shuffling by wearing a faded bathrobe and one red slipper. Jack hears Martin 's door slam shut and for thirty seconds the old man screams, "AAHHH, AAAHHH, AAAHH."
Then the building is silent and Jack listens to his own labored breathing.

A glance at the clock. It is a few minutes to 7 a.m. Jack hurries from his room into the hallway.  They pass each other on the stairs. The big man is coming up the stairs and Jack is going down to see O'Malley.

Jack has committed a trespass.

When the big man reaches the top of the stairs, the red exit light flickers like a votive candle above his head. The man slides the brim of his Giants baseball cap back and forth across his forehead, he turns and looks down, "Hello, Jack, brother. Dad loved you, too, you know." An instant later the sound of a door closing echoes down the hallway steps.


Jack Delleto is standing in the doorway at the bottom of the steps looking out onto the wet, bright street.

"Hey, Jack, man it's good to see you, glad to see you're still alive."

Jack turns, looks over his shoulder, "Felix, how the hell are you?"
The two men shake hands, then embrace momentarily.

"Ah, things don't get any better and they don't get any worse," shrugs the old man and then he smiles but his brown eyes are dull, and Jack can smell the cheap wine on the breath of the old boxer. "When are comin back? Man, you've got something, Kid, and we're going places."

"Yeah, Felix, I'll be coming back."  Jack extends his hand. The old fighter smiles and they shake hands. Suddenly, Felix takes off down Main Street towards Foodtown as if he has some important place to go.

Jack is curious. He sees the rope when he starts walking towards the Wagon Wheel Bar. One end of the rope is tied around the parking meter pole. The rest of the rope extends across the sidewalk disappearing into the entrance to the bar. The rattling of a chain catches his attention and when the huge white head of the dog pops out of the doorway Jack is startled. He stops dead in his tracks and as he spins around to run, he slips falling to the wet pavement.

The big, white mutt is curious, growls, woofs once and comes charging down the sidewalk at him. The rope is quickly growing shorter, stretches till it meets it end, tightens, and then snaps. Now, unimpeded by the tension of the rope the mutt comes charging down the sidewalk at Delleto. Jack's body grows tense anticipating the attack. He tries to stand up, makes it to his knees just as the dog bowls into him knocking him to the cement. The huge mutt has him pinned down, goes for his face.

And begins licking him.

Jack Delleto struggles to his knees, hugs her tightly to him. Looking over her shoulder, across Main Street to the graffiti painted on the boarded shut Delleto Market...

                               FANTASY WILL SET YOU FREE

                                                 The End

To Tommy, Crazy George and Snake, we all enjoyed a little madness for a while.


"Conversations With a Dead Dog..."
Poetry by MAN Mar 2014
Wake up Mi Amor..enjoy the Days to Come
Life isn't a sprint it's a marathon run
Hold yourself together through the good and bad
As we ride the roller coaster of happy and sad
Emotions like the weather here comes a storm
Take shelter in my heart I'll keep you warm
We can take a trip..don't worry about money
Lounging on the beach..I'll feed you when you're hungry
A picnic for two with a good bottle of wine
You can relax read a book as the day unwinds
Refills of morning affection overflows your cup
Clear your daze..Feel my gaze..Baby it's time to wake up..
M.A.N 3-25-14 Just a fun a way to wake up loved one..;)
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2018
“leave at your own chosen speed”

always,
Dylan inserts a phrase that haunts,
indestructible permafrost,
played in slow and ever slower reverb all life long,
for it’s intuitive and you recognize it too well
as the best companion to the sour ending of another love affair

(but! this one differs; called love yourself)

the sad of a dying love, remembering the steady drift away,
capped by a casual remark that doesn’t sting but
cuts a Y on your chest, a lover’s coroner courtesy,
the bad humours permitted to at long last healthy escape

you’re staggered but say nothing for
speed
is a changeable elf, a mischievous devil,
requiring constant monitoring cause you moving,
but the speed limit alway a reflection of the road you’re on

speed is a tag along to show the overall fit still works,
though now far from the obvious and familiar
and the inspiration modifies,
so you retrofit untill the parts are incapable of
bending to new demands, contours unfamiliar, old plans no good

“leave at your own chosen speed”

for I am leaving you as I leave myself,
beaches erode,  lighthouses corrode, the salt cannot be refused,
the earth demands your return as the lease is deemed
non-renewable and the space where the date shall be inserted,
is parcel of the contract and though blank, certain to be fulfilled

the body erodes, the ***** parts corrode,
and this season of the new year^ comes with the usual disclaimer
recited on the tenth day from today

‘who will live, who will die,’^^

taught to you as a young-in, a child who can comprehend
even before manhood arrives, comprehend that life ends,
all good things and it ain’t no use, born compromised, but
“don’t think twice, it’s alright”

the slate you have written overdue for a prudent clean wet erasure,
so you begin to leave at your own chosen speed,
which is kind of nice, even cool, organizing your papers,
write with contented softness that so long eluded,
now come easy heady peasy

after a life of reciting poetry, good bad and always too long,
the pressure is on and off, side by side, even a dimming bulb
sheds some light, revealing what yet needs revealing


that Day of Atonement annual visitor,^^^ he/she of impish humors,
makes Pandora play a new station,
‘dimming of the day,’
reminder that it gave you a piece of an unowned heart to hold,
leased temporarily but the temp is roaring,
who, boo hoo, for you?

life and love is all about leaving,
the pen in penitent gone dry, no refills in this new world,
wish that **** rooster would stop crowing at
the break of sundown,^^^^  when I'll be gone
I'll be travelling on, for when the new day begins,
that’s my own signature personal gravestone marker,
the sundown poet
------------------------------------------------------------­-------



~the first day of the new year on the Jewish calendar
  Mon, 10 September 2018 =  1st of Tishrei, 5779

  Rosh Hashana 5779
^ see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

^^ see poem  https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1833523/for-leonard-cohen-who-by-fire/

^^^ see poem https://hellopoetry.com/poem/462537/how-i-observed-the-day-of-atonement/

^^^^ jewish law says the day begins at sunset till the next sundown
The short-order cook and the dishwasher
argue the relative merits
of Rilke’s Elegies
against Eliot’s Four Quartets,
but the delivery man who brings eggs
suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs
du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress
carrying three plates and a coffee ***
can’t decide whom she loves more—
Rimbaud or Verlaine,
William Blake or William Wordsworth.
She refills the rabbi’s cup
(he’s reading Rumi),
asks what he thinks of Arthur Whaley.
In the booth behind them, a fat woman
feeds a small white poodle in her lap,
with whom she shares her spoon.
"It’s Rexroth’s translations of the Japanese,"
she says, "that one can’t live without:
May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love."
The revolving door proffers
a stranger in a long black coat, lost in the madhouse poems of John Clare.
As he waits to be seated,
the woman who owns the place
hands him a menu
in which he finds several handwritten poems
By Hafiz, Gibran, and Rabindranath Tagore.
The lunch hour’s crowded—
the owner wonders
if the stranger might share
my table. As he sits,
I put a finger to my lips,
and with my eyes ask him
to listen with me
to the young boy and the young girl
two tables away
taking turns reading aloud
the love poems of Pablo Neruda.
PJ Poesy Nov 2015
Arteries benumbed

Reading pharmaceutical's inserts no fun

Reading your mind even worse

Print so small

Foldings such as a roadmap

Those molecular models delineated

Moods might just as well be

Translating cuneiform

You wedge-shape marks on me

Deceptive blinks cut my clayey gray matter

That mascara you wear

Like kajal on Persian Princess

Ovular pills with spider legs

How do I defend from?

Enigmatical ellipses

Narcotic exotic

I look for, but find no

Adjoining pamphlets or warnings

To all your strange side-effects
Ashley Centers Aug 2010
The television is on with the football game  
blaring from the speakers with people crowded around
screaming out plays, and insults. Jumping up and down until
the popcorn and beer a spilled and it's time for refills.

The kitchen is a mess. Packed full of chips and dip, pizza and coke.
It’s become a free-for-all. An all-you-can eat buffet.

Candles scent the air and lamps light the way
When you come, you won’t want to leave
Because it feels right. Because it fits.
Copyright 2010 Ashley Centers
Zygos Jan 2022
Tracing smoke with dry ice fingertips,
I hold my breath and begin to float.
The heat of a bellies past burden
steams to my head, until I begin to rise.

No where to go, except everywhere I'm late,
so I drift along a black and blue sky pretending
to be a storm. Pressing clouds into my skin
that slowly evaporate into recovery along the way.

Unconscious and shattered, I land where I've
always been. Cloaked in dew drop kisses and
pink morning yawns, I could pull the earth over
my head just to snooze into eternity.

But there's a mouth at my neck, breathing sticky
lies and humid affairs. Each whisper a grain of
sand, filling my vision with a million fragments of fog.
Blurring what ever I was and who ever I will become.

I drink shape shifting water that always refills as
*****, lubricating contorted lust and pages that
won't burn. Scraping scabs for clues and emptying
all my pockets for loose change as a compass for hope.

Slippery slumber, the hot air rises to make room for
cold confrontation and chilling truths. On every
surface you'll find manic scribbles that feel
like immortal truths
bleeding from my fingertips,
only to wake in silence with no resolution.

Just the melodic drone of recycled air from the AC.
Patrick McCombs Oct 2010
My words wrapped in a chain
Restricting my choked refrain
Fear the words i say
Cutting deep into your way
The Warm blood spills
Take it away before it refills
The blood of the fearful,the blood of the sheep
It's for them we weep
You are leeches that **** out our blood
Leaving us in **** and mud
Were taking it all back
Before it turns black
Tangling us in your web of lies
We see through your disguise
We know what you are
You've made it this far
The grass will still grow
And the wind will still blow
But you will be gone and forgotten
Dead decayed and rotten
A new day will dawn
We will stay and you will be gone
Jimmy Timmons Dec 2013
Let it out
Twist the cap
Pop two out
Relax, sit back
Vale Luna Jan 2018
My brain is a bowl of spaghetti
I can be turned with a greedy hand
And a rusty fork
Eating my thoughts
From an unwashed container

Please stop eating.

I don’t think I can afford
To lose another fork-full
    another strand of memory
Let alone
Be mixed up
With the other ingredients
Poured into my skull

It seems I’m getting sloppy.

Refills are impossible
Because the more I try to stuff inside
The more the contents overflow
And the threads of words
Come spilling out
When I beg them not to

Well.

I hate contradicting myself
But without anyone eating
And without room for refills
The nutrients inside
Will begin to rot
And disintegrate
Into nothing but molded mulch
So everything I try to retain
Will be useless
    and inedible

The filth accumulates.

Insanity will be the smell of my mind
It will control my every action
A single whiff
Strong enough
To lower the IQ of a genius

I’m losing myself.

I’d try to explain it
In understandable terms
But it seems the correct words
Were lost
    when I was bitten into
And scattered
    when I overflowed

This is what I tried to describe before:

My head is a box of noodles
I can be dented with a pinky finger
And a dull knife
Tasting my dreams
From a…
        Hm.
    Sorry.
What were we talking about?
ogdiddynash Jul 2023
the doctor cautioned me…

no rough S?x my boy, your coeur très ancien,
ain’t up to the task, in fact, i urge you to forgo
the goings on you love to write about, leave them
words on the page, six to eight inches (!)  from the
tippy part of your…nose; for distance makes the heart
grow fonder, life longer, when you ticker gets that
‘lost that loving feeling’, keep it lost for now, cause
I no longer make home visitations and cancelled,
I did, the refills on your ****** scrip, keep your loving
confined to the twenty six alpa-bets, so you grow
old, well, alive, cursing my name repeatedly with
a strong *******, and I’m sure He’ll be listening,
cause I know He appreciates a **** good poem!
Erika Skye Jun 2013
That feeling that you get when you drop the last bit of your ice cream cone.
When you think you lost your phone and it's in your back pocket.
When you simply can't find your glasses, which are on your head.
When you trip over a painted line.
When your bookmark falls out of your book.
When you think there's an extra step at the top of the stairs.
When you think there's an extra step at the bottom of the stairs.
When you conveniently keep hitting a newly formed bruise.
When you can't find a matching sock.
When you accidentally press send before you're ready.
When you break a hair tie.
When you step in a deceivingly large puddle.
When you get a paper cut.
When you scratch a CD/DVD.
When you sing along to a song you hate.
When someone steps on the back of your shoe.
When someone's tag is sticking out.
When someone's a loud chewer or chews with their mouth open.
When your hair blows around and gets stuck in your gum or chap stuff on your lips.
When you stain your clothes.
When you lose an earring.
When you run out of cream for your coffee.
When you get to E in your gas tank.
When you step in gum.
When you sit on hot leather seats.
When you sit on wicker furniture with shorts on.
When you get shampoo in your eye.
When the soap is so small it crumbles to pieces.
When no one refills the toilet paper.
When someone sticks the milk or juice back in the fridge with half a sip left.
When you can't for the life of you think of the name of something.
When you forget how to spell simple words.
When you have to walk barefoot on hot pavement.
When you get an awkward sun tan.
When you forget to reapply.
When you get fingerprints on your glasses.
When someone spoils a movie or TV show.
When your favorite character dies (love you Sirius).
When you have an itch with a cast on.
When you can't open a combination lock.
When you hear a mosquito in your ear.
When you drop your change everywhere.
When you smudge your nails right after painting them.
When the Bruins lose.
When the end of your jeans fray.
When you get hat head.
When you get shocked by inanimate objects or people.
When you (re)realize there will never be a new Harry Potter book.
When you have something stuck in your teeth.
When you can't fall asleep at night.
When you can't turn your mind off.
When your phone decides to shut itself off.
When you have a cord that just isn't long enough.
*When time after time I have to remind myself that you aren't who I thought you were.
CandidlySubtle Jul 2016
A glass cup sits on a table,
Five inches tall and smooth walls,
Plain, ordinary, transparent,
Water filled to the rim,
Glistening, clean, and pure.

A thirsty man sees the cup,
Gets excited and reaches out,
Be gentle, he says to himself,
But the water still spills,
It was filled to the the rim, you see.

A few drops fell onto the table,
But it's only a few,
Only a few drops slipped,
Only a few drops gone,
Only a few drops missed.

The man takes a gulp,
Quenching his thirst,
The water is no longer pure,
He takes another gulp,
The cup is no longer clean,
Another and another,
Until a sliver is left.

The man refills the cup,
With something he likes,
Slightly below the rim this time,
The liquid is no longer clear,
But the glass still transparent.

The man takes another gulp,
Another and a few sips,
Until there is two inches left,
He abandons the cup,
         Unfinished.

A glass cup sits on a table,
Filled less than halfway,
Opaque and unclean,
It stands on the table,
Among clean water,
         Spilled from before.
LittleFreeBird Nov 2015
when its empty
and lonesome
so am
i
when theyre gone
faded into yesterday
so am
i
when they disappear
so do
i

since when did i become
a prescription?
Joshua Haines Apr 2015
In flashes,
her face dances
on top of a
broomstick body.

She refills
coffee cups and
her stomach with
butter pecan ice cream
and lovers' saliva.

But her lovers are
strangers
and her mouth is a
place
where secrets are locked
behind smoke stained teeth.

In flashes,
her ambitions escape
into the jet black night.
Cigarettes dropping like
sputtering fruit flies.

A size seven New Balance
buries a Marlboro corpse,
burning out like the light
in her kiwi eyes.

She returns to the diner.
What echoes reign free.
Samuel Bass May 2013
Driving off onto the 101 rush hour concrete jungle, there are no exits,
only obligations to stay stuck in my mobile cubicle moving at the speed of slow.
Hidden flowers on the hillside bloom away mocking my insanity,
they cheer me on to see beyond these gray prison bevels.
Gray blocks hollow until they're filled with my humanity,
making me take the choices reaped with devils.

I feel like I've lived a day in one hour, it's so early it could be midnight.
Twisting and turning in my brain, the sun suddenly ridicules, feeding me a fresh case of insane.
I'm at a point of sorrow, sorrow of an exceptional quality, Grade A-farm raised, take two tomorrow.
The raven croaked nevermore, Juliet is the sun, dangren-burang1.
We have to go. I'm almost happy here2. Complacency rots insides, then refills with fear.
So - Listen to them - children of the night. What music they make3. Clamoring for sight.
There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to ****. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof4. Filled with truths, synapse salvoes, loves, and drugs. We love what we eat and eat who we are. GERManic germs looking for psychological thrills. You work the guns, I'll rattle the hills.

Smoking cannabis to an over-extent, hope lost, old kung-fu and 80's movies won, I eat smoke for breakfast.
This sun is still mocking me, “Start your day, be productive, make a baby, then expiry.”
Stepping into society, I'm a satanic leaf-tailed gecko wanting freedom, abdicate, and let go your kingdom.
Halfheartedly half washed dishes in my sink; this entropy roller-coaster of highs and lows drives me to drink and think, then drink and smoke, making life one strange syrupy green swirl of mammarys and calamities filled with brevity’s of rarities.

5,000 images, 2 comedies, and a numb right arm later I've turned into dark matter, invisibly pulling all that matters together into a forever stretched infinitely, literally making synergies out of life-energies.
1) Yield to nobody when one is doing what is right. 2) Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin 3) Bram Stoker's Dracula 4) V For Vendetta
Mona Apr 2016
Life flows through the doors,
Dispersed by the ceiling fan,
A makeover for every patron,
The waitress serves a second chance.

Ex-husband but current parent,
Negotiating with a teenage daughter,
Two untouched lunch plates,
As the gap grows further and further.

Central focus being on a book cover,
Held by an E.R nurse still in her scrubs,
The waitress tries to decipher a meaning,
All while wiping leftovers from table tops.

The calender on the wall says Friday,
And in walks a sundress along with a button down,
Two steaks and a red rose,
Right up comes the waitress with a dinner to astound.

Beginnings and ends in motion,
The clock cues for the 40-something man,
In the far corner he sips his black coffee,
Forlorn eyes of a widow staring at a wedding band.

Wiping beads of sweat from her forehead,
Retying her hair into a secured knot,
Exhaustion slowly kicking in,
As she refills the coffee ***.

The college girl strolling in with her book bag,
Smiles with pity at her as she gives her order,
She thinks of how her minimum wage must look,
But her love for her job makes her smile never falter.

Days are something treasured,
Every hour, a different movie plays,
She collects all those stories,
With the tip left after the customer pays.
Mike Hauser Nov 2013
What's it like loving you
If you feel the need to ask

It's like being offered refills
Before your halfway through the glass
The freedom felt by a superhero
When he puts on the mask

That's what it's like loving you
If you feel the need to ask

What's it like loving you
Allow me to explain

It's like the first sight of your blushing bride
On your wedding day
It's like all the love you've stored up
The moment you give it away

That's what it's like loving you
Is the best way to explain

What's it like loving you
Thought you might want to know

It's like standing in the bright sunshine
And basking in it's glow
It's like hearing your favorite song
Played twice in a row on the radio

That's what it's like loving you
Thought you might want to know
Melissa S Jul 2013
Early one morning in a small cafe
I wanted to disappear so I came here
With only a dollar to my name
The waitress was friendly and brought me some coffee
Thank goodness the refills were free
She didn't ask any questions just simple conversation
It is like she knew exactly what I did need
She brought me a plate of bacon before I could resist
Then smiled sweetly and said "this plate will never be missed"
This waitress made me believe in people again and humankind
All because of simple kindness and for giving me a moment of her time
To this day whenever I smell bacon cannot help think of her and smile :)
rsc May 2015
Pressure puckers &
a migraine blooms
parachute leaves looming
from my mind,
moonscapes of bare rock.
I've been waking up in a tomb again,
mouth mummified &
crusted over with drool as
my body jolts up at 6
6:45
finally 7:
I rise from the dead once more.
Yeats spoke to the Beats & he speaks to me,
feet creaking old floorboards
in a house with no internet.
"Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'"
I ate artichokes for lunch on pizza &
lost a piece of my soul down
the toilet of the coffee shop bathroom.
I came out of the womb once & I think that was enough.
I cough up brown mucus
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
One of my ribs pokes out
& picks my lunch for me,
pointing rudely,
leaving blood on the gleaming glass.
People around me discuss
the value of places they've never lived
& a homeless man sleeps with his mouth open.
I drink an infinite iced tea
that refills itself whenever I get thirsty &
a prehistoric potted plant
belches dinosaurs back into existence.
I clean my teeth to become
the princess of the salad greens,
eating olives with the tips of my fingers
the way monsters eat eyeballs
in the nightmares of children.
Everyone shakes,
terrified to look at each other
mouths bleeding confetti & glitter.
A remedy to bitterness: simple syrup.
I want to write love letters
to the boy who broke my heart &
still has all the shards.
I found out yesterday
that I'm a woman of hard angles,
that my moon might always be fighting
to whole its halves.
My calves are sore
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
I'm afraid of empty bird cages &
waking up without a tongue.
My lungs do a dance under my rib cage
& shake my skeleton out of my body.
Hot toddy & we drink on Tuesdays.
Any available body will do.
Picasso's blue period never seemed more lifelike
than when I try to jump
head first into the nightlife.
Nothing can be proven true
but I think my respiratory system
is at least not false.
If I believe hard enough,
I can feel my pulse.
onlylovepoetry Jul 2023
(be-tween and be-twixt)

———-


the most precious but precarious item
in our possess, value far above rubies,
this love overflows, but it drowns me
from within, for it has no home for
pleasured sharing and goes wasted, excreted
in tears and exhalations without destination

condition incurable, and the doctor advises,
projects, a life span rangebound from
be-tween
and
be-twixt,

imperative that this love be
disbursed, pressure relieved,
fluid and gases shared,
send it forth,  
Doc behests,
nay,
begs,
you’re a decent human,
tell your tales,
follow your motto,
write those love poems,
always leave them laughing,
and give them love in smiles
all-the-whiles
bringing joyous relief to your clogged arteries,
all this the bare minimum,
for you must moreover grasp and clasp
your body to another, for this
the best transfer transfusion
of all your needed love needs

go be needed, be great, be lessened,
be all three
and never walk alone,
with just hope in your heart,
for the heart, automatically refills,
and this the best, medical opinion…
for all those with too many love poems
requiring expulsion and extrusion
galaxy of myths Feb 2018
The tears welled up,
fell,
and streamed down
into a river.

My love for you was as natural
as a constellation formation,
as a gathering of storm clouds,
as flowers blooming then wilting.

But I guess it is just
as natural for this to end.
Like the sky clearing up
after a whirling of tornadoes.
Like a bird no longer tweeting
when the night comes.

What tears I've shed,
will be  refilled again.
I have loved, they have left.

But I will love again.
For I am ever growing.
I am made to love and hope.
And I will never run out.

-m.b
SE Reimer Oct 2013
wax runs slowly from his candle
as ink flows freely from his pen
daydreams stretched out on his anvil
where each word he hammers into rhythm

with skill he’s tooling an ode of mourning
beside his fire lies a sonnet undone
paintings of prose around him are scattered
and unframed verses his walls adorn

a haiku sweet graces his table
a ballad long covers his floor
his home already filled to overflowing
one wonders if there is room for more

he’s unable to sell them, try as he might
though each skillfully crafted is a work of art 
still driven he labors long into the night
his blood turns to ink as he pours out his heart 

down at the market where men sell their wares
poems fetch only a penny a line
he’s chosen a craft that a pittance pays
he’ll have to settle for a book of rhymes

his inkwell low he walks down to the store
where he refills his stock of whiskey and wine
exchanging his farthings for bread and butter 
and a chance at a glance of a fair lass fine

she, his inspiration, and fuel to his fire
yet she’ll ne'er know, she’s his psalm to be sung
so on marches time and their verse can't be written 
for his words flow on page, just not from his tongue

so the wax keeps running from his candle dim
the ink from this wordsmith continues to flow 
his daydreams he hammers over his anvil
but prose they might have written we’ll never know
~

post script.

this one didn't start off as a lost-love poem.  funny how that developed as i wrote it.  it began more just as a reflection of the art of wordsmithing, and how much it is that we hammer, bend, spin and curve all manner of words to make these things we call poetry.  language... what a gift we have to convey our love, our anger, our disappointment, our expectation to those around us.  a beautiful thing!!!
Justin Time Jul 2014
One day at a time
My Mom's the strongest
At alcoholics annonimous

One day at a time
I count my pills
Doctor hopping prevents the chills

They keep her going
Her AA peers
Four months in, without a beer

They keep me going
Addies, I'm wide awake
Kolonopin, come reduce my shakes

So proud of you
As I look in her eyes
New innocence within her mind

So proud of you
Her oldest son
Living lie, I am one

Can't sit still, feelings overflowing
I grab a pill, my cravings growing
Trick all my doctors with false symptoms
Just to control my nervous system

They say life has ups and downs
When I'm down, I pop some ups
Pop the downs when my heart erupts
My morals gone, I am corrupt

One day at a time
Made that motto evil
One day at a time
Countdown to my refills
Christine Jun 2010
Girl waits anxiously,
Foot bouncing
Hands tapping
Mind in overdrive.

The woman in charge
Has her hair shaved on both sides
And tattoos covering her torso.
She takes two smoke breaks
And decides she might as well get paid.

Science? On your body? Whatever. Get in.

The girl holds out her foot
Pink and white and black
Ready and willing
To be punctured
Like the god's coloring book.
She talks to drown out the nerves.

Her friend follows
Awkwardly? Quietly?
Holds out fingers
To be used in case of emergency.
The first gets a vise grip on them
She starts singing pop-culture
From decades past to distract.
It just seems out-of-place.

The woman pays no attention.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Refills her ink
As an artist must have supplies.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
She loves these needles
That penetrate and alter.
Allow the body to be a canvas
Both practical and beautiful.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The girl's hand sweats
Death grips do that, I hear.
She has to wipe it off more than once.
Her friend is being little help.
She cringes!
Needle got close to bone
To nerves.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

She finishes
Puts away her needles
And her ink
Cleans her canvas
Though this was not her favorite artwork.
She sends them out.

She hobbles
Foot newly changed.
Human symbols now visible,
She is no longer just earth.
Her friend follows.

She now has the mark of humanity
Of science
Of society
Forever on her skin.
She now belongs to the world.
Missy Beminio Dec 2015
sometimes when you meet someone
the heart beats faster
there's nothing better
I can't wait to see you again

feeling more alive these days
awake in this outer space
seeing double vision
a bird you can't touch

close my eyes and feel the sun
i feel it's only just begun
feels like summer in my heart
with trees taller than earth

that genuine smile gives me chills
I want unlimited refills
there's nothing I wouldn't give
to hold you close again.
Daniel Wetter Apr 2015
I quit my job while deep in debt
the devil made me do it
showed my boss mad disrespect
the devil made me do it
I claimed to be the king of the ******* south
the devil made me do it
retraced my steps when they found my house
the devil made me do it

Before I take a ****,
or even open my eyes,
I’m thinking of my trip,
to my lucifer guys.
They’re up for whatever,
and so down to ride.
Open my hatch back,
and down they slide.
Into the system,
these limitless prescriptions.
Looking for myself,
while i'm taking whats missin.
The depiction of myself,
is honestly twisted.
Honesty as foreign,
as **** is to christmas.
Sobrietry wishlist,
as soon as this **** hits.
There no stopping my little pitiful ***** fits.
I’ve heard I’m better sober
but I tried not to listen
I said that i felt broken
they said these pills would fix this.

I flashed my **** in a public street
the devil made me do it
I went streaking while i beat my meat
the devil made me do it
I called a nun an ugly freak
the devil made me do it
then we had fun in her backseat
the devil made me do it

It's the middle of the day
things are feeling hazy,
3/4s of my family thinks I’m ******* crazy,
the other quarter just thinks I’m lazy,
but thats okay because I may be.
I won’t know, until i try
so ice cold deep in my eyes.
Look for soul what do I find?
Another reason why I hide.
Why try hard to fall behind?
Running out of pills and lies,
refills will **** me in time,
but Dr. says I’m doing fine.
Am i though?
Are you alright?
Tell me dude
no need to fight!
Invite me back into your life,
the love and trust you used to like,
you threw away like useless lights.
Lighten your load, don’t hold tight,
to crutches just to walk upright.
You mumble and avoid your eyes.
As you go I hear you say,
I’m just doing this the devils way.

I told my dad I hate his guts
the devil made me do it
I lied and stole and broke all trust
the devil made me do it
I moved out quick it was a must
the devil made me do it
Then moved back in about a month
the devil made me do it

Man this moods the ******* worst.
I'll pop one more it couldn’t hurt.
Whats another?
The others worked.
I think too well, my stomach hurts.
I’m so ****** that I took too much.
I’m one week in, this script is rushed.
My ration game it ******* *****,
My rationale is love the lust.
While is lasts I'll have a blast.
But the devil gets his last laugh.
He’ll leave when I need him most.
Disappear.
A ******* ghost.
In my shell, yet so exposed.
Living hell, the devil knows.
What I need, and who I love.
He takes both, exchanged for drugs.
I stay afloat when I’m ****** up.
Living out an addicts luck.
Stuck inside the Devil's truth.
I did it cause he told me to...
I do it cause he tells me to...
I live it cause I always do...
I'm sick of what I’m told to do...
I do it cause he told me to...
Stephan Aug 2016
.

Dear Patient,

Here’s the prescription
I promised to write
Just like any doctor might do

An extended leave
A southern location
A room with a beautiful view

A candlelit dinner
Moonlight and roses
A bottle of chilled chardonnay

Romantic music
Soft summer kisses
Sending your worries away

The one of your dreams
An evening together
Love on a warm summer night

A sunrise good morning
Breakfast in bed
Satin sheets woven in white

A day in the sun
Drinks on the river
Affectionate moments for two


Take all you need
There’s no expiration
Unlimited refills for you

Signed,
Your Poetic Physician
Sub Rosa Dec 2013
Getting on
through a trying work hour in the night-time rush,
groped by strangers with dark eyes
the color of neglect and whiskey.
Men with knives under their sleeves,
calling you back and back again,
refills for their poison and pretzels for the table,
don't be a *****, darling.
I only want to feel those hands trembling
under mine.
All you ever knew were the bruises and the burns.
Gliding closer and closer to
your face, your hands,
inching towards the skin that gleams, exposed
and invokes the shame you feel from
fetid breath on your neck, these
animals with moldering livers.
but another round for the men in the grease and grime.
Green bottles and a smile that said
'I like the taste of your weakness,
You like the abuse.'
Fay Slimm Jul 2016
Love-Dust.

A heart's entrance door
opens only from inside to outwards
and once ajar, before
blinking at expressive freedom sees
love's unknown wonder.
Soul- secrets when told will astound
love's doubt through
meant whispers into dreamer's ears
then pour nectar over
each fur-lined ache of hurting need
as Cupid refills fonts
with sating love-dust. until slaked
is thirst by no more want.
drumhound Feb 2014
Among 
the buckets
and mops
a man pushes aside  

a sponge hoping to find
anything without a sharp
mildewed stink.
Somewhere he’s hidden
a meaning,
and his soul.
He’s sure.

Before the pails
filled with dank
green
liquid,
before the loss,
before diapers and rent
he dreamt 

of a midwest girl, 

five acres of bluegrass 

kissing the feet of a cabin, 

a horse named Scotch, 

and a secret escape 

near a creek 

where he could fish
...or not.

But today is not about
a childhood dream
never discovered after
hide and seek.
Today, like most days,
he fades into the structure 

with his monochromatic 

gray uniform 

and attitude. 

Children running, 

passing him,
taking him in as inventory.

Desks,
chairs,
chalk boards,
water fountains,
the half man in gray.
If not for bending over 

to pick up 

the page-puckered 

third grade reader, 

his eyes would have never been seen 

or a thank you uttered.

He is only spoken of
in children’s whispers.
The young ones
talk, with fabled tongues, 

of his home in the closet 

with a single 

pull-chain light and 

quickly hung 

supply store calendar 

still lingering 

on January.


Wedged between 

pink soap refills and 

puke litter 

are three tattered photos 

long neglected 

dusty with heartache.

Pigtails and freckles 

frame the eyes 

born matching his. 

Yellowed Kodak moments 

embrace memories departed

but longed for 

in a girl, now woman, 

disconnected and tortured.

A white-haired matriarch 

crayon outlined lips 

around an endless smile 

of fraggled teeth. 

She wears her love and life 

in experience lines 

like rings in a tree. 

He wears her name in a heart 

on the forearm tattoo 

he got an the first anniversary 

of her death.

The last, 
a boy 

strapping 

bat in hand 

trophy at his feet.
Tugging at 

the brace on his knee 

he remembers it more vividly 

than the photograph. 

What he cannot recall 

are the cheers and praise. 

The stench of the closet, like motor oil
and any pre-Monday night,
trumps it all.

He didn't choose today
but today has a way of reminding him
it’s here and stretching on
into forever.
What an icy gambler today is,
seeing our dreams and
calling our bluffs
until we’d simply
settle for “hello”.
Clay Face Aug 2021
I’m sick of watching them squirm on the floor.
But it never ends, I always want more.
Once the feeling seeds,
it’s put on the list of needs.

Is it shameful?
Or is it natural?
I have a needle I can’t get rid of.
It refills itself after each use for free.

It’s plunger is pulled back so easily.
Anything over the course of the day.
Can fill it’s tube with lives.

Can’t help but push it forward.
Release.

It ends not so clean,
Because I am ****** Machine.

— The End —