"refitted" poems
Cocooned under a web of road
rail and footpath at Top Locks
five narrow boats await their fate
stuck in a canal trade ice age.
Calling for new boat people
to change course from speed and stress
they're refitted cleaned and preened
for slow lane contemplation.
Slowly ne vessels pump life blood
branching out across old veins
filling the ships with goods again.
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 10:32 AM UTC
You have set me free
from you
and although there is nothing now
for me to hold onto
I am refitted with a strange and alien freedom
from longing
and the terror
and though I still am stricken
with a lonesome and crushing wave
it is to be expected
I expect
So now I run
no longer through the fields of your hair
in my dreams
but with my own
childish arrogance
and when the cold winds blow
it won't be your name they whisper in my red and bitter ear
most times
but at least your name is
carved deep in there
among the wax and hair
it is still written
but no longer will I yank
and tug
and try to pull a dream into reality
and that is what you have saved me from
Oct 11, 2010
Oct 11, 2010 at 11:23 PM UTC
bird **** plummets onto the roadway pavement as pedestrian traffic moves through the crosswalk intersecting Johnson and Douglas, vaguely luminescent from the bright of the sun until they transit beneath the awning shadowed canopy of a downtown tree planted on the sidewalk and disappear around the sight-block of an old redbrick corner building now refitted to host a Burger King, its windows grimey with human sweat grease and fast-food fast-life apathy.....
// // ... // // ... . and as I open my eyes, I realize it for the visceral memory it is; a waking memory-dream of the job I once held at a smoke-shop downtown. A job obtusely abandoned with no more than a crisis-ridden "sorry-goodbye-so-sorry-goddamnit-goodbye." These strange internal replicas of days spent in hours sitting, waiting, small-talk drenched in my own irrational impatience at everything-at-once, habitually referencing death as a way out from the hollow auditorium in the back of my head where all my thoughts lose themselves amongst their own reflections in an endless hall of mirrors. These are the only souvenirs I possess from the end of an era.
Life has simultaneously come and gone. Death and birth manifest in every moment. Dapper conventions leave a framework in place while I peep through the wide open margins where walls and windows should be, wondering if the jig is finally up.
Long before both my birth and the birth of Christ, Heraclitus wrote:
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
and just as it is in life experienced, so it is in the grand rivers and overlooked tributary streams of memory quite the same.
And though it may not be the same river nor I the same man, the flow of both is contiguous with all. This I know for certain.
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017 at 12:57 PM UTC
THE BEST TELEVISION PROGRAM
THAT I'VE EVER SEEN
JUST HAPPENS TO BE
SHOWING ON MY SCREEN
I HEREBY TENDER AN OVERVIEW
OF WHAT THE PARTICIPANTS DO
THEY RENOVATE HOUSES THAT
HAVE BEEN LEFT TO ROT IN MILDEW
RENEWING OLD FLOORS WITH
LOVELY HARD WOOD
AND THEY GIVE IT A COAT
OF SHINNY LACQUER TO LOOK GOOD
BATHROOMS ARE REFITTED OUT
IN TILES AND GRANITE TOPS
THESE KINDS OF IMPROVEMENTS
CAN ENLIVEN THE SAD SOPS
YARDS GET CLEARED OF ANY
WEEDS AND OVERHANGING BRANCHES
WHICH CERTAINLY LIFTS THE DEMEANOR
ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE RANCHES
I ALWAYS MAKE SURE THAT THE TELLY
IS ON BY 8:30 PM SHARP
TO WATCH THE MAKEOVERS
REDEEMING HARP
Oct 22, 2017
Oct 22, 2017 at 9:57 PM UTC
That was seven years ago,
Youth had smoothed me out long ago,
Refitted these bones with fresh skin,
No way this old scar would need treatment,
What is going on here?
Tell me why you bandaged my arm,
How did I get hurt this badly?
Matthew didn't flinch when he said,
I just wanted to cover it that's all,
You were inviting unwanted attention.
That was the truth, his words were spoken flawlessly,
His steady grin stood still,
He didn't turn away, as he often did when,
He was lying.
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 8:28 PM UTC