"storefront" poems
lying in the street
a thin shell
and broken on the inside
some ****** with a gun
rifles for the kids
at the storefront
let them learn
before they can’t forget
i say
this will run
as deep and dark as you allow
whether or not you can tell
*get on your feet
it’s a thin wall
and won’t weather the shells*
i tell you
we americans have agreed
you are either prisoners or refugees
and we must know which
although,
if you are prisoners
you are criminals
if you are refugees
you are blameless
there is no room in our heads
for honest prisoners
and no such thing as
a guilty refugee
tell me brothers
what crimes have you committed
to be in such a prison
how black are your hearts
tell me sisters
what monstrosity displaced you
what savages took your home
let me help you
a man from here once said
let those without sin
send the first rocket
tell me, friends
who is to blame
because we in america
need to know
who to root for
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 9:08 AM UTC
I am a poor man
sitting on the corner of
Your Conscious
and Your Reality.
All day everyday
I sit in that spot and
beg for change.
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
A cup of change
to water my feeble hope, thorny rose
rooted in concrete hatred.
Roots, like my fingers,
too feeble to hold anything
but this patch of dirt to remind
me, I exist.
ALMS! ALMS! ALMS for the poor of heart!
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
A cup of change
to wash away the muck kicked in my face.
A cup of change
to cleanse the wounds made
by verbal bullets shot out of nine millimeter mouths
wielded carelessly by boys society has deemed as men.
I sit in this spot and fester,
like a dream deferred.
My skin, cracked and brittle
like aged parchment, hangs over my frame
like sheets over antiqued furniture.
I sit in this spot with
arms open wide, heart open wide, eyes open wide
BEGGING FOR CHANGE!
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
A cup of change
to strip the lies and propaganda
from the decrepit facades of your ideas,
storefront workshops left from the age of enlightenment.
My body yearns for nourishment
but I can't afford your lies.
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
Now I'm not asking for a Jesus on Galilee moment,
just a cup of change to feed what's left of my soul.
But who am I to ask for anything?
I am just the poor man
sitting on the corner of
Your Conscious
and Your Reality.
All day everyday
I sit in that spot and
beg for change.
But keep your quarters, nickels, dimes
for someone else
'cause all I want is a cup of change.
Nov 9, 2011
Nov 9, 2011 at 10:54 AM UTC
The attendees are told, in a manner befitting a high mass
You have been finally set free,
(Although, in truth, free is a very large and entirely vague word),
And the message is sent forth from all comers in all corners:
Vendor and visionary alike,
German socialists who left university to ride boats for Greenpeace,
First lieutenants doing their level best
To appear at ease in civilian polos and khakis,
But no matter the vessel,
The message is still the same.
The tyranny of cables and storage space is dead,
It is all but shouted from the lecterns,
(Although it is noted, in small print and sotto voce
That there are certain requirements
In terms of hardware and licensing)
And it is stated by Those Who Know
In tones which neither brook nor invite contradiction,
That they have surmounted, all Hadrian-like,
The alpine divide separating mere data and magic.
Two or three blocks down the street from the convention center,
In a narrow storefront housing an exhibition of ether-only comics
Which have broken the nettling constraints
Of editors and syndication,
There sits, under a somewhat opaque
And slightly scratched piece of plexiglass,
A yellowing comic strip of uncertain vintage,
In which a frowzy cat,
Free of the constraints of panels, gender, and standard grammar,
Is the recipient of a mouse-tossed brick
Whose flight, unfettered by physics, probablility, indeed time itself
Ends striking its mark right between the x’s of the eyes
The projectile itself an inexplicable alchemy
Of confusion, mirth, frustration
And the impossibility of an undeniably pure love.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 9:29 AM UTC
I sit amongst rampant consumerism,
Yet I smile as I sip my Starbucks tall Pike Place.
To my left, old ladies decked in Tiffany decry their neighbours folly,
Even while they sit blind to their own.
To my right, Chapters!
Book store that offers so much more,
A perfect monument of society's needs answered in one storefront.
We don't shop here for a read, or for the escape some unknown author's words spell for us.
No, this masterfully crafted shop answers our shared need of empty spending on soulless items that will lift us from the mire of our meaningless lives for one instance,
Before that scented candle or witty greeting card is left to collect the dust of our fallen gods.
Behind me the street is full of noise but no one is listening,
Busses carry the many but each is a world onto themselves,
Thoughts not of their making wrestle for attention with smartphones,
Before long the thoughts echo what the eyes read on the digital screens glowing below them.
The enemy of my friend...
Don't let consciousness wake!
Combined the noise without and the noise within will drown whatever chance we had at relevancy.
And so Oprah wins,
Look under your chairs,
It's your new life,
Not to be mistaken with your old one,
This one comes with a shiny new automobile, trip, ring, dress, shoes,
Anything but enlightenment.
Before me,
Possibilities.
You?
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 2:42 PM UTC
The city falls away, gray, as I rise,
my ladies cozy in the glass lift – to seven.
Ten to four. Spot on. No need to worry.
You’d think it were High Tea – be late; no break.
Between five and six, the blasted thing stops!
Me, stuck in a fog, with the Barrister’s waiting.
Before they moved in, taking up all of seven,
I stayed in the mezz., tipping my ladies to the cups.
The lift jolts, jostling the ladies, rattling their tops.
I move out; cups, cakes and savories in rows, like ducks.
“English Breakfast, Darjeeling, Earle Gray”, I say,
wishing the solicitors away, in court today.
A pinched-face woman, aghast at her clocks, rushes in.
I made inquiries today; for the lease of a storefront next door.
Lin Cava ©
Oct 12, 2010
Oct 12, 2010 at 3:55 PM UTC
A storefront window
A wax figure
that shed its oily fingers one
by one to feel closer to its
yellow core. Moving meant
melting, and melting meant
a puddle of desperate,
flesh colored wax
separated from the summer
encased behind a pane of glass
melting was not an option
so motionless it remained
with an elastic smile
and immaculate hair
greeting guest, upon guest
with false love and
glazed marble eyes
gleaming like cubic zirconia
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
when you only
see the world
through the prism
of an Instagram filter,
the spectrum's
overshadowed
by black and white
vignettes.
brick-by-brick
you build that wall
around yourself,
closed off to the plight
of every one else.
who needs borders
when you refuse to see
beyond the periphery
of your iPhone's screen?
refugees? border patrol?
endless war?
merely fragmentary
snapshots
in off-kilter
snapchats
casting grim light
on contemporary
outcasts, rebels
built to outlast
the vitriol leveled
at modern-day martyrs
by tyrants and overlords.
'cause when you neglect
to read the passages
of history, you scapegoat
the brave, can't see
the forest for the trees,
reduce the complex
to Manichean binaries
of Good vs. Evil,
Left vs. Right,
an infinite etcetera
of demagoguery.
noses glued
to illuminated screens,
ignoring the visionaries
for illusionary fantasies:
one-click—purchased
happiness, bread
and circus.
advertising
has us chasing
a feeling fleeting
as a riptide when we
ought to be rallying
on the front lines,
punching Nazis.
a black bloc
tossing bricks into
storefront windows.
Apr 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2017 at 12:46 AM UTC
Inspired by Emily Dickinson’s Life.
As the clock strikes
midnight in a perfect world,
they only want to know one thing:
What does your soul look like?
In the beginning, three sat together
in darkness, sweating and chewing miraa,
talking of unlikely things and dreams
while ******* down Tusker.
It was refreshing to be nobody,
soft baiting the line
and wasting time
gambling shilingi.
The sun outside set sooner than expected,
dipping well below the low buildings,
so they ventured out into the cobalt
blue evening, not thinking too much
about who might be listening,
speaking bravely as their words
and jokes slowed down beside
shadows beyond the city lights.
Laughing more, the three hopped on
a matatu at Kimkambala, smelling
the final wisps of dinner in each
passing village, watching as a purse
got pulled just paces from the road,
until they got off by Fort Jesus.
Further and further, they treaded home,
walking alongside the Indian Ocean -
Through the thick, green night, almost
fog-like, tip-toeing by an old man and
his flashlight; he slept soundly on
the steps of that corner storefront.
The three whispered their goodbyes,
and headed separate ways.
The youngest of them slid easily between the
narrow alleyways, and finally through braided
black bars. With the turn of a treasure-chest key,
he was back in the courtyard, walking past the
stripped bones of yesterday’s catch, where he
decided to make his permanent address, today.
He had dwelled where dreams are born,
but only for a day, and searched to find
sunset in the tip of a cup – when the
sunset was enough. He knew
that it was too much as he asked
a stranger to fill him up to the brim,
and told him not to worry, he would
say “when.” He had worked hard to
lay down his guilt on the altar, and not
return to gin, making this decision:
He decided that being
born to homeless winds
doesn’t mean that you
have to be homeless, and
as he climbed the broom-swept
maroon steps, up to the roof, he
breathed deeply. How pleasant
it was to look out onto the sea,
reflecting the pearly moon,
so beautifully.
Feb 16, 2011
Feb 16, 2011 at 12:49 PM UTC
All of the pencils in the drawer are broken
Friday Night I'm sick of being alone
Hopping off the curb in search of the killer
Sniffing out the house parties
They like the bass loud and it swells
******* us inside past ten parked cars
They freestyle about
Gun fire and blood on concrete
He said I didn't believe him
Cracked out beyond repair
He shows me the scythe and hammer tattoo on his left breast
I laugh with the proletariat
Cheers and some soul passes me the bottle
Cigarette smoke contained by plaster walls
I'm eight days sober
Don't tread on me
Says a ***** blond next to me on the couch
All strung out she is searching
Searching for a bent spoon and needle in the tall grass
Back yard a bonfire
Walking barefoot on broken
Heineken bottles strewn in the shadows
Popping molly and sweating
She called me a hick
Her dopamine receptors
Rubbed flat by heavy grade sandpaper
I called her nothing
I was too busy watching
The rats scurry against the wall
To their safe warm nest
In the insulation
A hand around my wrist
Milk white incubus
With breath like puked whiskey
I escaped through a hole in the couch
I fell between the cracked leather cushions
And slept with the rats in piles of pink
Fiberglass insulation scratching at the flesh
I slip outside through the cracked window
A woman stands at a console
Turning dials that cause the streetlights to dim
And bleed storefront windows fractals of neon
She asks me what else I would like to know about the world.
Someone tells me to get in and the door shuts
A sound like gunfire I perspire sweat with cough
Syrup scent peaking on the dark road to Okeechobee
I should **** myself or run barefoot again through your head
Where the forest floor is warm and the trees are alive always with birdsong
Apr 6, 2013
Apr 6, 2013 at 4:14 AM UTC
got outa the cab
easily
communication in 8 font
stepped into the snow bank
before the panorama
Joe Beef in Little Burgundy
squeezed in storefront offering
an inviting quest
closed for the night to be sure
some background silhouette motion
the shaded light from street and within
a shadowed tool box and c-less drill
in the front window
surrounded by Montreal
we be lookin’ for a reason
for another hajj
Joe Beef
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 12:59 PM UTC
Twenty-somethings, homeless,
but with perfect fashion,
in muted greys and translucent lilacs
sit outside Union Square.
They have the coolest tattoos
and the coolest carboard signs,
all more transcendental and valuable
than the sidewalk they sleep on.
Some are tweaking, some are sleep,
some lean and have spit dribbling
from their burned lips as they drift
into a coma, like war heroes.
I want to give them a bowl
of my homemade vegan chili.
They can have cheese and sour cream,
depending how righteous they are.
I want to speak sweetly with their mothers
while they prune geraniums
along the cracked and faded sidewalk.
I wont smoke in their parent's garage
like an outcast uncle,
or have more than one beer with dinner.
The next day I’ll go back to the storefront
to explain everything I've learned, over
instant coffee and Entenmanns.
This time it's their turn to share wisdom
as 13th Street muscles from slumber,
achy under the weight of lost bodegas
and barbershops.
I’ve been told every homeless person needs a sign,
no matter what variation or breed.
Some write a new message every day, some stick to one,
but only a few don’t write anything at all.
“Not even gonna lie:
need money for bud.”
The pulse behind the sign renders words irrelevant.
The 500 year old Chinese woman captures the room
like a drunk teenager.
The oily scarecrow with a leather hat dances,
rattling his tin can.
Only occasionally will an assertive hungry hobo be satisfied
with a granola bar in place of anything less than Jackson.
“This is what it sounds like,
when the doves cry.”
Southern church bells ringing through dive bars filled with sinners.
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 12:28 AM UTC
Jumpercable dreams
Defibrillator epiphanies
Wet streets of this city.
Rain way rivers down
Alley and walk.
Fumble for the seventy-five cents,
Slam!
Crack!
Vroosh!
The heights are drowning!
Shared awning storefront,
It's not stopping and it won't ever stop.
The Lee Rd. sidewalk,
Now the new Rio Grande,
Flows to the big parking structure,
Now an Atlantian City,
Relic to a cryptic past,
Arcane acropolis.
Dry overhang is my raft,
Only it,
Too,
Is sinking.
The spider hanging from the wall,
Does not even notice.
Perfectly at peace,
Master Spider has his web,
His dinner,
His enlightenment,
All of which are part of the
Arachnid awning and web zen garden.
Jul 23, 2010
Jul 23, 2010 at 10:52 PM UTC
I know what it's like,
standing with your back
against the storefront window,
to reach into your pocket for a dollar,
but pulling out only six pennies
and a ticket stub.
Or to return to work on a Sunday
and dread seeing the faces of
the lonely, toothless men in
oversized shirts that haunt your dreams.
I know what it's like
to drive home midweek,
midnight, head full of worries,
and to find your bed void of warmth,
bad music the whole way there on
the radio.
If you care to listen
I can tell you what it's like
to have your fast food meal cut short
with father on the telephone,
"Grandfather's passed away today,"
or to realize that that poem you've
been writing is full of recycled verse,
words already written - and you knew it all along.
Jul 9, 2017
Jul 9, 2017 at 7:39 PM UTC
Scattered myriad of burned down roaches and the stench of stale smoke in the air
Charlie Parker plays from the doomed speakers
There's a cacophony of noise in the outside sunshine breeze
and the dusk is setting
The amalgam of police siren sempiternal wailing and deep bass affection
The windows rattle as riot vans cascade, anguish
and the hooded teen bleeds out unconscious, knife wounds
Skinny framed cloud-man, arrived so sweetly this morn
and leaving dust-bowl plethora, startled screaming mother in mourn
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 4:33 PM UTC
"arson is always the answer"
he says with a delinquent grin
we're ****** and ****** up
smashing our own storefront windows
for the sake of the beauty
in the shattered glass,
in the crimson staining our skin
we keep ourselves busy
tending to our wounds
then brag later, calling them battle scars
in an attempt to counteract
the pitying stares and then
the disgust when it's learned
their source is our own hateful hands
just stroke our teenage egos,
stoke the flames
and we will continue
to set your world ablaze
we'll search for awe and distraction
**** consequence
you know we had no future anyways
Apr 18, 2013
Apr 18, 2013 at 10:10 PM UTC
Like it or not, each place holds a memory
I may not have played on these streets
But cemented beneath the building lamplights is my first real kiss--
Israeli-flavored, textured like tabouleh--
These shuttered storefront windows are not my version of Brooklyn at nighttime
But I know what it is to turn this dark corner coming home--
Tired from dancing, completely alone--
This rooftop terrace is not mine, not where I crafted a hip adolescence
But it is where I built bases for potluck communities--
Here my love of human connection was crafted, then bourne.
My current apartment is still not really mine--
Belonging, as it does, to the landlords creaking the floorboards above me, their parrot, and their cat--
But it is where boys first slept over, where first I was marked by someone
Leaving their toothbrush, their territorial imprint behind.
I guess I'm saying--
We don't choose which memories get locked in where,
Nor have we any say when they happen or why
We can choose to rage against the imperfection of their sense of timing or location-
As I so often do-
Or we step onto a street of acceptance that these are our Lives, and our experiences
Will happen at their will, where they will, when they will,
And despite their imperfections, we are along for the ride.
Aug 15, 2017
Aug 15, 2017 at 3:43 PM UTC
Because when I drain my coffee and see my face reflecting in the dark glossy bottom of the mug, my eyes are holding something that I can't blink away.
No matter how hard I try, it sits along my lashline, glazed over my pupil, reddening the corners and doubling my vision.
I set my mug down. I've dripped coffee on my t-shirt. My eyes are gripping tight to a sensation that is so painfully familiar that it almost feels welcome. Like I wouldn’t know what to do if it ever left.
It’s a scary comfort, curling up in that feeling. I know it so well. Sometimes I want to reach out and cradle it against my chest where it purrs like a childhood cat. It’s beautiful and black, sleek, with paws so big they weigh down on my chest. Makes it hard to breathe but I don't dare move.
My hands find reprised solace along the ridges of its back, petting patterns down its silky fur. When I look down all I see is its big yellow eyes, drowning my sight and filling every corner with that numbing company.
It's a dangerous cat, whose dark slivered pupils I see in my own. In the bottom of a mug, a storefront reflection, a dark screen. It's so comfortable that I sometimes forget to miss the feeling of being alone.
My legs are pins and needles where it sits in my lap. Makes it hard to believe I'll ever stand again. It's a blessing to have a quiet mind.
The cat purrs and purrs and purrs.
Oct 7, 2022
Oct 7, 2022 at 5:30 PM UTC
Linking the ritual chronology of the past few days in accordance with 'The Boy's' 21st birthday. No longer a boy, but not quite a man, but unsure if that was the ambition at all. Linking the rites of spring with the rites of summer, endless summer, indian summer, endless ****** no longer sure, were we ever, and did we ever want to be?
The seasonal threshold coupling the brutality of summer freedom. All those years on the bench in systemic education, waiting, counting the days until the breakout of summer, the breakout of the nation-wide epidemic of drips of sweat rolling down foreheads, cars racing up and down the highway going anywhere but home, if only for a few minuscule hours of freedom. Not really knowing what to do; the only certain knowledge; that doing anything is better than doing something, whatever that means.
Proud proletarian patriot, hating with every inch the structure and the scaffold, the zephyr swishing and swooshing over the surface of the storefront, while the air condition whirrs away, in a little town on a little island in a massive inlet in a vast sea, tossing and twisting, raging and blistering with the toils of work, throwing rhetorical fists in the air like-you-just-don't-care, with drops of Digital Ink. –with that strange symbiotic disharmony that emits from the boy's fingers, fuelled with every every-day stimulant, caffeine, nicotine, THC; Trembling Hallucinogenic Creation. The ongoing tremble of uncertain fingers, searching for a certain certainty he knows he'll never see.
And therein lies the tragedy
But also the beauty.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 8:49 AM UTC
When I went away to school,
I lived in a town with an upper and lower main street,
on one of the slanted connector streets
there was a storefront church
with a white cross sign above the shop
that said, "Jesus Saves".
Just beyond, and next door,
hung a lower sign reading "Green Stamps".
Not sure whether anyone else ever noticed,
but tickled me near death each time I saw it.
And I've been juxtaposing ever since.
Jan 18, 2011
Jan 18, 2011 at 9:49 AM UTC
Shouting slurred meaningless obscenities falling corrosively
On the impressionable ears of all of those unlucky enough to hear
A snapshot of a generation within a soulless storefront of some new age coffee shop
That used to be a pawn shop next to an old hole in the wall jook joint called Cool Joe’s
While twirling her shiny silk strung platinum hair that used to bounce in brunette curls
She’s smiling as she’s telling her room full of new lovers
About her even atom tan
Aug 13, 2011
Aug 13, 2011 at 2:14 AM UTC
the instant, the instance, is that your body?
the clear cleansing storefront windows
ask for clarification.
is that your body, presently?
is that your body presentably?
just in that secular instant, again, over,
the body’s inquisition clarifies, asking,
requesting in a babel of foreign languages,
repeat after me!
each window pane that follows repeats the query,
the themes in each, tiny variations,
the variables of rhythm, timbre, harmony,
engine timing minute minutiae alterations,
in that passing milli-instant,
each a separate instance for each separate pane.
in every instance. in every language.
the accusations tonality oscillates in wavelength pitch.
quest nonetheless similar,
is that your body?
all the replies are mirrored reciprocal.
that was my past.
this my present.
the next, a future vision.
the here, the now, all of it, each a flashcard.
the insistence!
*when your body falls finally upon
the sidewalks concrete filthy city Persian tapestry,
the shameful answer tastes always the same.*
always the same.
May 21, 2019
May 21, 2019 at 8:50 AM UTC
The streets are dark. Not a sad soul in sight in this one-horse town.
The traffic light is green, but I stop and wait for it to turn yellow….
Then red….
Then green again.
The air has a chilled serenity.
The town is fast asleep, except for the sundown-activated street lights
And the occasional neon storefront sign.
I tap the steering wheel, hoping it will show me where to go next.
It doesn’t.
So I steer it home.
A different route than usual.
...But home just the same.
Aug 12, 2012
Aug 12, 2012 at 1:15 AM UTC
at the storefront
where the life blood
poured out
from the hearts of many
balloons flowers and letters
(C)2001, Christos Rigakos
Apr 6, 2012
Apr 6, 2012 at 7:19 PM UTC
As I check the evenness of my afro in the reflections of storefront windows while walking by
Smiling about whether the eyes watching
Are scared of where blackness has been
I am proud
Apr 30, 2019
Apr 30, 2019 at 2:52 PM UTC